Bronte's Inferno XXVIII (All Of Ken Dodd's)

It wasn't that kind of blue tablet. Although I suspected at the time Hella might have preferred that. Nor was it knock-off valium. I don't know what it was. As for what it did… Well, it was like everyone else, maybe including the cat, had been pumped full of sodium pentathol. Also, I might have become invisible.

'That was a neat trick,' Woland was speaking, he sounded like Kenneth Williams. 'How did he do that? It took me millennia to learn that one.'

'Will he do it, Daaaaaaah-ling?' Hella really was smouldering, and she'd gone all Fenella Fielding.

'I don't know. But we need a new writer. I thought he was so certain to sign. Writers – always so damnably awkward. Not like composers and musicians. Stravinsky and Paganini: so eager. I must say their enthusiasm for the novelty 45 r.p.m was tremendous. The Singing Postman's – all of Ken Dodd's: a fabulous effort by Eugène Scribe with Niccolo on that one about the violin by the way.' Woland said.

Hella nodded, murmuring, 'yes, daaaah-ling' into his ear.

Charon was no longer buttled-up. She was clad in a draped dress, possibly one last seen on Ursula Andress in Clash of the Titans. She winked at me, pointed two fingers at her eyes and waved one finger of the other hand at the rest in the universal sign language for 'but not them'.

I got 'What the f-' out before she shook her finger at me. So I gathered both of us might be invisible, but we weren't inaudible. Some crazy pill.

As for the cat, he now filled the chair, his back legs were crossed and he was smoking a pipe. In his other hand was a Tokarev pistol. The cat was speaking. I would have been lying if I'd said I was surprised that something called Begemot was speaking in Bernard Bresslaw's voice. It crossed my mind that the drug was a powerful hallucinogenic.

'I don't fink he's the right one. I should 'ave shot him.' The cat, with remarkable dexterity of paw, fired two shots into the ceiling.

'Oh do behaaaaayve, Beggers, love.' Woland said.

Hella, still behind Woland's chair, stroked The Editor's hair. 'Don't worry dah-ling. He'll come back. They all do.'

I glanced at Charon, jerked my thumb over my shoulder at the nearest door and mouthed 'Vamonos'.

She shook her head from side-to-side slowly, what she mouthed meant either that we couldn't or her opinion of me was disappointingly low.