Page 36 of The Final Vow (Washington Poe #7)

Poe and Bradshaw spent the rest of the afternoon checking they hadn’t missed any new role-playing game stalls. Poe said he’d rather they did it together. That he didn’t have the right language to engage with the stall owners. She’d just said, ‘Thank you.’

When they were halfway round, Poe said, ‘So, are you going to tell me what Matt Towler was doing before he worked for Archie Arreghini, Tilly?’

Bradshaw considered his question carefully. ‘I don’t know, Poe.’

‘You do know, Tilly. You said he’d done something odd before he began working for Archie Arreghini. Then you stopped talking and tried to make me eat fruit. That was weird, even for you. So, tell me what he did.’

‘I have no idea what he did before working for Mr Arreghini, Poe.’

‘Are you lying, Tilly?’

‘I don’t lie to you, Poe. I never have and I never will.’

It was true. To the best of his knowledge, Bradshaw had never lied to him.

Not once. He sometimes wished she would.

Her painful honesty and natural inquisitiveness could at times be .

. . painful. It wasn’t that long ago that they’d been in a meeting together, and the label on his new boxer shorts must have been digging into the small of his back or something.

In front of everyone, she’d asked him if he was squirming in his seat because he had an itchy sphincter.

They’d had . . . words afterwards. It hadn’t made any difference.

She still told the truth, and she still asked the questions.

But, she had developed workarounds for when she knew something she didn’t want to tell him.

She’d choose her language carefully. Make sure she could answer truthfully while at the same time telling him nothing.

Poe suspected now was one of those times.

And there was no point forcing the issue.

She was the very definition of an immovable object when it came to certain things.

Or, as Doyle put it, she could be even more stubborn than him.

‘Suit yourself,’ Poe said. ‘Why don’t you tell me about the Norse Parmesan instead?’

‘ Pantheon , Poe. Parmesan is an Italian hard cheese. A pantheon is a group of respected or important people.’

‘Yes, Tilly. I was being deliberately silly. But regardless, you seemed to know who they were. Tell me about them.’

‘Why, Poe?’

‘Because you’ve been trying to get me to come to one of these things for years,’ he said. ‘But instead of bursting at the seams with excitement you’ve been subdued. And now I know why. You were expecting them, weren’t you?’

‘I knew of them. I had never met them before today.’

‘OK, if not them exactly, someone like them.’

Bradshaw took her time answering. Eventually she said, ‘All aspects of the gaming and comic book community have problems with misogyny. And although it is improving, there are still men who think women don’t belong.

They say war is the domain of men and unless we’re camp followers, all we do is get in the way. ’

‘Yeah, I heard Horace spout that nonsense,’ Poe said. ‘Even ignoring the fact that women now serve in all branches of the military, that they’re no longer restricted to rear-echelon roles, role-playing games are not war. They’re just games. Same as Snakes and Ladders or Monopoly .’

‘One famous designer went as far as to say that games were primarily designed for men as a woman’s brain functions differently. That they couldn’t play to a man’s standard. Some went even further and said that gamer females fake their interest to attract gamer men.’

‘There’s nothing as sad, nothing as vindictive, as scared white men, Tilly. We both know this. We’ve seen this. It seems they had something and they don’t like that others now have it too. They’ll defend what they see as their turf with sexist tripe like that.’

Bradshaw nodded her agreement. ‘And as most of the older games were designed by these scared white men, for these scared white men, there were problematic representations of the female character. Her value and power lay only in her appearance. Her fighting prowess was limited so male characters had a built-in advantage. Warlocks you don’t like comic books and role-playing games.’

‘And you don’t drink beer but that didn’t stop you going to the Carlisle Beer Festival with me last year.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘And you drove me to the Boiler Shop in Newcastle to see Half Man Half Biscuit this February. You hated that.’

‘I didn’t hate it, Poe. I put in my earplugs and thought about the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture until it was time to go home.’

‘Birch and . . .?’

‘Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture,’ she said. ‘It’s one of the seven Millennium Problems. Each one has a million-dollar reward for its solution.’

‘Blimey,’ Poe said. ‘Pity you didn’t solve it, it would have paid for the petrol.’

‘I did solve it, Poe.’

‘You did?’

Bradshaw nodded.

‘And they gave you a million dollars?’

‘I didn’t tell them I’d finished it,’ she said. ‘It didn’t seem fair. It only took me an hour.’

Poe looked at his friend. ‘Just how clever are you, Tilly?’

‘I’m very clever, Poe,’ she said. She looked over to where the Norse Pantheon incident had taken place. Her brow furrowed. ‘But I do still have a lot to learn.’

‘We’ll learn it together,’ Poe said. ‘And from now on, I’m coming with you to every comic event you ask me to. No exceptions.’

‘You will?’

‘I will.’

‘And you’ll wear a costume?’

‘Don’t push it,’ he said. He paused. He pointed at a stall.

‘That wasn’t there before, Tilly. Let’s go and see this fool then grab something to eat.’