Capt. Spalding
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<p>Late last month, Gina_Crews_Fan requested an Emma Peel tickle story once encountered. Quiller responded with the classic "Emma's Last Case." Stelnikov nudged me about the following, which I posted years ago on the old EZBoards TMF. (It reappeared on TICKLETOWN as well.)<p> <p> Compulsive meddler that I am, I started to revise it--hence, the delay in reposting it here--before it occurred to me that the original had a snappier pace and, pleasingly, relied more on dialogue than most of my stuff. So, while I may finish the revisions (in which Mrs. Peel laughs more) and post them someday, here's the (barely retouched) original! (Phew!)<p>
*I believe that Canal + Image UK, Inc. hold the copyright to THE AVENGERS and
the characters of John Steed and Emma Peel. I offer this fannish tickle tale with all due respect for the
characters and the copyright holder and with no intention whatsoever of accruing any monetary gain.
*Dedicated with great fondness to Brian Clemens, co-producer and yeoman telewriter
of THE AVENGERS. Anyone who has enjoyed such classics as “The House That Jack Built” and “Epic”
is welcome to tip his/her bowler and twirl his/her umbrella or unzip his/her Emmapeelers in assent.
*Gee, what if Stanley Kubrick had used “Make ‘Em Laugh” instead of “Singin’ in the
Rain” in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE . . .
*Hisses or kisses to [email protected] .
*Now, open a bottle of champagne, fill your glass nearly to the brim, and kick back . . .
Prologue
Moira Dancer entered the offices of Fabulous Fashion Footwear and was wished a
sincere “Good morning!” by every person she met as she navigated the central corridor to the executive suite. This was not unusual, as the fashionably tall and trim 42-year old redhead was the President and
Chief Executive Officer of this firm, an up-and-coming darling of the shopping malls and the London
Exchange. Her smile to each greeting was automatic, but, as was her custom, she was preoccupied with
a pressing matter, and virtually looked through her employees as they hailed her.
She strode into the anteroom of her suite, and received from her assistant Noel a greeting, a cup of Jamaican coffee, light, no sugar, and a folder filled with the morning’s schedule, the daily statements, and correspondences requiring her immediate attention. He also informed her that a delivery person was placing a large package that very moment in her office. Indeed, as Moira stepped into her
sanctum, said person—tipping his cap to her—was stepping out. The deliverer— a slightly-built person with long black curly hair and a full curly beard, wearing a dark cap pulled low, reflective sunglasses,
and a dark jumpsuit-- stopped at the desk, waited as Noel signed a form on a clipboard, croaked a “Thank
ya’, luv,” and departed.
In the office, as she sat at her desk sipping her coffee, Moira noted that the package, measuring about 15 inches square and resting on the carpet, bore a return address. She donned her wide,
dark-rimmed glasses and saw that it came from THE FOOT FOUNDATION, an organization upon
whose Board of Directors she sat. She was curious, but, noting it was quarter past nine, straightened up at her desk, plunged into her paperwork and entered into her series of a.m. appointments. The box was the source of a few attempts at humor by her visitors, but otherwise escaped her notice until the last meeting ended, right about noontime.
Removing her glasses and setting them on her desk, Moira rose and stretched. She then
informed Noel that she was not to be disturbed for 30 minutes. She slipped a CD into the player on the
shelf behind her desk, and the soundtrack of the American musical film SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN began its
opening credits theme. She sat in her chair again and rolled it from behind the desk so that she could at
last closely examine the large package.
Carefully slitting it open with a handy, company-embossed shoe knife, she lifted out of
the carton another box, almost as big, whose exterior of gray metal and burnished wood trim was otherwise featureless except for two black footprints silhouetted on the roof. A small envelope fluttered
to the floor. She retrieved it and extracted a note card which, in raised letters, stated, “ A present from
a fond admirer at the Foot Foundation.” She wondered, grazing her lower lip with the card, which acquaint-
ance at the Foundation could be the source.
She peered into the outer carton to see if it offered any clues as to the origins and to
the purpose of the inner box. There at the bottom of the carton was a modest pamphlet. It explained that
the metal and wooden object was “The Happy Feet Automated Shoeshine Box: the modern essential which
shines your shoes while you wear them—safely, efficiently, completely adjusting to the size, fit, style, and
color of your footwear with computer precision.” Moira smiled; some salesman no doubt used a Foundation member to get an endorsement from her.
Still, she mused, eyeing her feet, clad in sheer hose and next season’s burgundy FFF pumps, it couldn’t hurt to give the Company wares a spruce-up. She read further that “It is only necessary to sit facing the Box and to place one’s shod feet upon the footprints on its surface. This completely automated wonder will do the rest.” Well, it was a no-lose situation, Moira thought.
Sitting back in her chair, she raised her feet and placed each upon the corresponding
silhouette on the box. A click and a whir could be heard, and her peds in pumps descended into the box.
Then, another click, and a padded flange tightened around each leg, just above the ankle. Moira started,
trying in vain to remove her feet, which were caught fast.
Behind her, her sound system blared with Donald O’Connor singing “Make ‘Em Laugh”;
There was no fear of disturbing anyone outside, as her office walls and doors were solidly soundproofed.
The box whirred again, and Moira gasped as she felt her pumps being slid off of her
stocking feet. She saw them ejected from the far side of the box and landing askew upon the carpet.
Another click sounded, and she felt a pinprick on her right big toe, which caused her to shout, “Oh!”
She immediately felt a little light-headed, a little . . . giddy, and very . . . amused.
Thus, when further whirs sounded and she felt the many, many microbrushes begin to
insidiously stroke atop, under, and between her nyloned toes, along her barely covered instep, and across
her sheer-coated heel, Moira began laughing with a helpless abandon. Her cries for help from her staff
outside were lost in an outpouring of giggles. Her attempts to grab her calves and pull her stocking
feet free of the box were weakened by her hilarious shudders.: lol
The box engaged in a seemingly endless series of brush arrangements, revolution speeds,
and intensities of application. Each one seemed to elicit more hysteria from the helpless Moira Dancer, who, red-faced, with her make-up streaming down her cheeks, fought more and more desperately for
breath, as she laughed and laughed, until—
She gurgled her last and fell back into her chair. The box whirred and clicked once
more—and was quiescent. Donald O’Connor climaxed his song, “ Make . . . ‘em . . . laugh!”
THE AVENGERS
Starring Patrick Macnee as John Steed
and Diana Rigg as Mrs. Emma Peel
in
A GRAVE, TICKLISH MATTER
Steed follows the laughter.
Emma bares her sole.
by Tee Hee Lawrence
Part One
Emma Peel was dozing in the chair when her pedicurist announced that she was done and left to serve another patron. Mrs. Peel reached up to pull her long, auburn hair from her eyes and leaned
forward to inspect the beautician’s handiwork. She beheld black block letters printed on the sky blue polish
on some of her toenails. The letters spelled, “Mrs. Peel . . .”
Suddenly, John Steed was standing in front of her and leaning on his umbrella, beaming
and intoning, “ . . . we’re needed.”
Steed was still beaming and leaning on his umbrella as Mrs. Peel rotated once in the late
Moira Dancer’s chair before fixing her attention on the large box with a pair of burgundy high heels set in
the footprint silhouettes on top.
Mrs. Peel mused, “The victim died of heart failure . . .”
“—apparently induced by prolonged laughter.” Steed continued, “She is the third such
victim—all top female footwear designers—this week.”
“The previous two received similar packages?” Mrs. Peel queried as she lifted the shoes
and passed her hand over the footprints on the box.
“On Monday, Mrs. Kalinda Hall, 34, of SMASHING SHOES, LTD., Dorchester received a pair of high boots which she donned . . .”
“—and never removed, laughing herself to death?” Mrs. Peel offered.
Steed winced as he said, “Tiny, mechanized brushes set in the boot soles. Result: heart
failure.”
Emma peered into one of the shoes, asking, “Tuesday?”
“Miss Manuela Cortes, 38, formerly of Valencia, Spain, more recently head of ANGLO-
IBERIAN SANDALS, Wapping, received a pair of tied-high-on-the-calves platform sandals, which promised, electronically, a foot-soothing massage.”
“She was tickled pink by the pair?” Emma was removing one of her own ankle boots
and trying one of the victim’s pumps for size.
“Pinpoint pulses of stimulation delivered to selected areas of her soles until her heart
beat its last.”
Mrs. Peel rested her high-heeled foot on one of the box’s silhouettes. A click sounded,
the silhouette gave way, and she yanked her foot away. Peering into the box’s works, she asked. “Did any of the three have a medical history indicating coronary vulnerability?”
“Hale and hearty, they laughed at their mortality—so to speak—the three of them.” Steed inserted his umbrella tip into the box.
“Then, how does one explain the apparent ease with which they were tickled to death
by these devices?” There was a crunch and Emma knotted her forehead as Steed raised his umbrella.
A circle of tiny brushes ringed the tip of the umbrella, which Steed studied.
He reached into his breast pocket and produced a small glassine envelope holding 3 thin, inch-long plastic
tubes, each of which bore a short hypodermics needle. This he handed to Emma, saying, “Found in
the works of each murder weapon. Source of the solution which autopsies revealed in the bloodstream of
each victim. Analysis indicated, among other elements, a concentrated nitrous oxide derivative and a violent nerve stimulant."
“So they were primed for a fatal tickling. Charming!” Mrs. Peel shuddered as she picked up the note card from the desk and considered it. “Did the other victims receive similar salutations?”
“The same.” Steed removed his bowler and extracted like two note cards from the inner
lining. Reading, he intoned, “A present from a fond admirer . . .”
“… at THE FOOT FOUNDATION,” read Grace Walker from the note card she’d
pulled from the small carton just delivered. She was swallowing, compulsively one after the other, a series
of vitamin tablets, between sips of ginger-infused, green tea. “I wonder who…”
She heard a throat clearing, and looked up from her desk at a slightly built delivery person with abundant black curly hair and beard under a black cap and wearing reflective sunglasses and a black jumpsuit. “I’m sorry, you need—ah!” She signed next to her name on a list on a clipboard. “’Looks
like you’re delivering to all the FF board. I’d better see what the competition’s getting, eh?”
The delivery person smiled, touched his cap, and croaked a “Thank ya, luv,” and left
the cottage. He boarded a small van, unmarked except for a small pink bare foot imprinted on each
of its two doors, and, casting a smirk at the cottage, drove rapidly away.
Within her studio in the cottage, Grace turned up the television beside her worktable,
festooned with design sketches of women’s shoes. A health talk show host was interviewing the author of a
book extolling the healing power of laughter.
“So you would recommend that the public laugh often?”
“Oh, yes, it should be in the daily regimen as much as drinking plenty of water and
exercising aerobically.”
The 28-year-old Grace sported a close-cropped cap of straw-colored hair, deep blue
eyes and full red cheeks atop her five-foot, five-inch, 140 lb. frame. She was dressed in a white sweat-
shirt bearing the name of her young, up-and-coming shoe manufactory, HER BEST FOOT FORWARD. Her wrists jangled with electromagnetic copper bracelets, and an aura-stimulating crystal pendant dangled
between her breasts.
She’d been working almost without rest since Monday, not even checking her phone or computer for messages, on her new line of killer, fuck-me pumps, which would incorporate glitter suspended in an aqueous solution in the toe, heel and sole. Indeed, she was wearing a prototype pair now, and her bare feet were a little tender and weary as a result.
“How much laughter fulfills the minimum daily requirement?” inquired the talk show
host.
“It’s not simply how much one laughs, but how well,” cautioned the author.
So, she figured she deserved a break and was grateful for the excuse to examine the
slim package before her. From some bubble wrap, she removed what looked like two athletic shoes,
each with a synthetic human hand hanging from the sole. In one of the shoes was rolled a pamphlet which
revealed that these were “Radio-activated Reflexologists: The revolutionary relaxation
miracle which you activate at the touch of a button. Simply put on the shoes and, using the palm-sized
control, direct the precision fingertips to press the points on your soles which stimulate different areas of
your body.”
“Cool!” chortled Grace, and she fished in the package and extracted the bubble-wrapped
control unit. Soon she was seated cross-legged at her work table with each bare foot within a hand-bearing
shoe, and she was waving her thumb over the control nestled in her right palm. It seemed simple enough:
a round button marked “on” above a schematic of a foot with a dozen tiny button set within. Each button
was marked for a different body part, e.g., “neck” or “stomach.”
“The author droned on, “One should endeavor to find ways to provoke laughter—jokes, cartoons, reading Wodehouse, listening to the Goons, reading the letters to the TIMES…”
Grace pressed the “on” button. A low hum emanated from the shoes, then she felt a
strong tightening at her ankles. “What th--!” She felt a sharp pinprick on each big toe. “Ow-uh! Damn!”
A flushed feeling, accompanied by an urge to giggle immediately flooded her. The sole of each
shoe retracted into the heel. The fingers of the underhanging hands began to lightly stroke Grace’s toes and upon the balls of her soles.
“…any means to get you really laughing,” concluded the author.
Grace rolled off her chair, screaming with laughter, “No-no-no-ah-ha-ha-ha-eeyah-ha!”
Even unlaced, the shoes would not slide off her feet. She tried to pry the hands off her soles, but they
were firmly attached to the shoes, and were too strong to be deterred by her own fingers. Furthermore, they
now concentrated on stroking under and between her toes, tormenting the tender flesh therein lightly but
but most purposefully. The tickling stopped and started again and again in a random, maddening pattern.
Her attempts to turn off the shoes by depressing the “on” button on the control proved futile. :lol
Her laughter rose to a pitch that soon drowned out the televised interview. Within
a few more minutes, though, her face was contorted in silent, red-faced hilarious agony, and she struggled
to inhale as the voices from the television returned …
“Would you recommend tickling as a healthful activity?” asked the host.
The author pursed his lips and answered, “In moderation, a little bit of tickling never
hurt anyone…”
Under the table, beyond moderation, beyond any earthly care, Grace was still, her hands
clutching one of her new pumps, glitter floating, flashing in its heel …
Part Two
Steed and Mrs. Peel peered over the top of the tilted worktable, he eyeing the fatal athletic shoes, she the glitter pumps. Both pairs were hanging from the table’s attached lamp.
“Note card?” she asked.
“Exactly like the others, down to the filigree,” he responded. “Our lateness proved
fatal to the late Ms. Walker. I think it’s time for us to divide this list of the remaining Foot Foundation
board members…”
“One of who apparently is a murderer,” Emma ventured as she took the list from
Steed. “I’ll pay a visit to Lady Victoria Healey—and warn her that any delivery by a curly-haired
person is to be regarded as a laughing matter. Hmm… or not.”
“And I,” considered Steed, “will seek out T.O.E.S.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“T-O-E-S,” Steed read from the list, “which stands for…”
“…Transform Our English Shoes, Mr. Steed,” slowly enunciated the short bespectacled
gentleman in the lab smock who had entered the T.O.E.S. office waiting room. He had a mop of dark
hair and a toothy smile; the smock was too big for him, and the sleeves crawled halfway down his hands.
He wore a black armband on one arm. “I’m Steptoe.”
“Oh?” Steed resisted the urge to quip.
“Yes, Prof. Martin Steptoe. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. The organization has been in turmoil these two months since the death of my twin brother, Harold.” He directed Steed’s gaze to a
portrait hanging next to the receptionist’s desk. “He was the real heart and, ahem, soul of T.O.E.S, his unique genius suddenly snuffed out by a fatal stroke no doubt precipitated by implacable mounting stress.
His daughter Stephanie and I have been endeavoring to continue his work, but it has been difficult.
Our operating funds have been diminishing. We face a threat!”
Steed had been studying a Chinese woodblock print of foot binding hanging on the wall
near the attractive receptionist’s desk. “ Oh, I didn’t realize you’d been informed…”
“Yes, a threat, Mr. Steed. The modern Englishwoman’s shoes are torture chambers,” Mr. Steptoe declaimed, as he rested his hand on a medieval torture boot resting on a pedestal. “Squashing the toes, mashing the heel, pinching the ball, they reduce women to a constant state of ill-temper, lowering
productivity …”
“…straining intimate relationships…” Steed added helpfully, as he considered a pair
of five-inch stiletto heels with equally sharp toes resting on another pedestal close to the very attractive
receptionist’s desk.
“…a threat to the health and well being of the entire nation,” intoned Steptoe. “That is why the recent cutback of funds from fellow members in The Foot Foundation has been so painful.”
“No more so, surely, than the cutback in board members of said Foundation,” said
Steed.
“Eh?”
“Four members have received delivery of deadly devices bearing a Foundation note card.”
“D-delivery, did you say?” Steptoe asked, as he looked to the door through which he’d
entered the room.
Suddenly from beyond that door came a woman’s shriek and hysterical laughter. Steed
lost his bowler as he burst into a large room outfitted with many computers running calculations and
robots walking on high-heeled women’s shoes. Amidst the various apparatus, a short, young woman with
long sandy tresses was seated with her feet trapped in a familiar-looking box—and she was laughing help-
lessly, desperately. A few feet before the box lay askew a pair of sensible loafers.
“Ha-ha-ha-h-help m-me, uncle! Ha-ha-ha!…”she screamed. “T-turn it off! Ah-ha-ha…”
: lol
Steed extracted the steel sword cane from his umbrella and placed its point against one of the closed openings in the front of the box, from which, no doubt, the shoes had been ejected. With all his strength, he inserted it under the panel and wedged it open. Then, he plunged the cane down into the bottom of the box beneath the woman’s tortured feet, and jerked it violently until the box’s mechanism seized, and became quiet.
The flanges opened atop the box, and Steed and Steptoe helped the whimpering brunette
remove her stocking feet from within. She sat her five-foot, two inch, 100-lb frame, clad in a lab smock over a mid-thigh flower print dress, back in her rolling chair, breathing heavily, and proffered a note card to her uncle.
“Stephanie! Are you all right?” Steptoe moaned. “What-what is this? Where did it
come from? This note: an admirer from the Foot Foundation? But, who?”
She stared at the floor, saying, “A few minutes ago, at the back door, a delivery by…”
“A curly-haired and bearded person wearing a cap and dark glasses,” offered Steed.
“Why, yes!” marveled Stephanie. “How did you know?”
Steed smiled and stared with pleasure into her deep eyes, saying, “Let me explain…”
Having done so, he made calls to, first—next on the list--Claudette Piedsdeux at FOOT-
HUGGERS, setting a four o’clock appointment, and then, Mrs. Peel, who was en route to Lady Victoria’s
estate. Stephanie, seeming to prick her ears at the conversations, pleaded tickle trauma and, putting on
her shoes, announced her need to go right home to bed, and, refusing Steed’s gallant offer of escort, left.
Steptoe unfurled a handkerchief from his pocket, Steed making note of the monogram.
Mopping his brow and shaking his head ruefully, the diminutive professor muttered, “Poor child. She’s a
brilliant, 22-year-old scientist, perhaps even more gifted than her late father. She’s been driving herself
relentlessly since his death, in spite of the constrictive budgets our donors have imposed on us. For some…
fiend to try to tickle her to death… why, it’s monstrous! I don’t suppose there’s much left of the device’s
insides for me to examine, after your heroic effort on behalf of my niece.”
Steed extracted his sword cane from the now heavily sparking and smoking box, and replaced it into his umbrella. As he stroked his upper lip with the curved wooden handle, his gaze moved
from the disabled box to one of the robots totteringly click-clacking on high heels just behind.
“Our robots, Mr. Steed, tirelessly aid our research into the engineering of safe, sane
women’s footwear,” Steptoe said, with obvious pride. “Do you suppose the tickle attack on Stephanie
is an attempt to cripple our steps toward success? Despite her youth, she is a world authority on the func-
tion and sensitivity of the female foot. All the technology harnessed by my late brother and I—advanced
computers, these robots, and the prototype footwear—is complemented by her essential expertise.”
“Her departing remark about ‘tickle trauma’ was curious,” offered Steed. “Does her
expertise—and your research—extend to female foot ticklishness?” Steptoe seemed to hesitate a beat,
but before he could answer.
“Mr. Steed?” It was the strawberry-waved receptionist with the sweet voice and the
long legs and the short dress and the high boots . . . “There’s a call for you.”
He moved briskly and, taking the phone with a smiling “Thank you” for the giver,
soberly answered, “Steed here. … Yes, Mother. … Oh, really? … I understand that’s fewer than forty-
eight hours away. … Of course ... I AGREE it’s a ticklish matter. … Good-bye.”
Steed handed the phone back to the full-breasted receptionist etc., etc. with a smile and
turned to Steptoe with pursed lips.
“There’s a complication, Professor. Within two days, THE SHOE SHOW BY THE
SEASHORE will commence in Brighton. It will feature female shoe designers from all over the globe.
Even with the heightened security the Ministry can provide, the concern is that our quarry may target
visiting designers next, sparking an international furor.”
“We normally would have had a booth, Steed, at THE SHOE SHORE BY THE SHE … THE SHORE SHOE BY THE SHA …THE SEA SHOE BY THE SHOW SHORE … ,” Steptoe fulmin-
ated. “Well, we would have been there, but the Foot Foundation’s cutback on our funding forestalled
that. Still, I want to help you stop this fiend,” he resolutely said, retrieving an overcoat from a nearby rack and fumbling it on. “No more women should suffer being tickled to death.”
Steed, with an eye toward the receptionist endowed as previously noted, “Not without
her consent, of course.”
As he departed with Steptoe, the object- of- his- eye brushed her chin with the blade of a quill, her sly smile indicating she was seriously considering his offer.
Part Three
Mrs. Peel’s Lotus Elan went into high gear as she navigated the winding roads of the
English countryside. She had called ahead to Lady Victoria and warned her in no uncertain terms not to
accept delivery of anything marked from the Foot Foundation, especially from a small, dark- and -curly-
headed- and -bearded messenger. She arrived mid-afternoon at the spacious Healey estate, dominated by
its Georgian manor house, set near a small willow-ringed, swan-filled lake, which, she observed with a
raised eyebrow, was shaped in the profile of a lady’s slipper.
The footwear motif continued as Mrs. Peel came to the front door and used the tall, buttoned- shoe knocker to announce her arrival. The smiling maid who led her to a grand room balanced
up admirably on the tallest golden heels Emma had ever seen. A tall, broad-shouldered woman— it
wasn’t often that Emma felt small next to any femme—with long golden hair, streaked silver, framing a strong, high -cheekboned face boasting smooth skin belying her fifty years, Lady Victoria, clad in a
gold-leather pants suit, with golden open-toed slippers upon her golden-hosed feet , grandly welcomed her guest.
She purred, “Mrs. Peel, what an interesting pair of shoes you’re wearing!”
Emma flexed her feet underneath the zippers of her ankle boots, which complemented
her navy-and-yellow single-piece suit. “What they lack in provocation, they make up in…complete
surrender to my active habits.”
“My dear, you don’t have to choose between style and mobility!” the Lady pronounced.
“This is the 21st Century! A woman should be able to flaunt her sensuous feet and walk comfortably at all
times. Running shoes. Sneakers. Construction boots. Clogs. (sigh) One might as well wrap one’s feet in
dirty burlap. Why wouldn’t someone want to encounter the world, wearing these…”
She rose from the divan she’d been reclining on, and opened a mahogany cabinet, revealing several slanted shelves, upon which were displayed over a dozen pair of high-heeled pumps and
sandals. Some seemed made of quartz, others of snakeskin, still others of iridescent silk. They were
bejeweled, sequined, webbed in metallic mesh, and dotted with black pearls. They bore tiny bells, displayed minute LCD’s, glowed with neon piping, and sported holographic insteps.
“These are the shoes of tomorrow for the ladies of today. Unique. Digital. And guaranteed to draw any passing eyes to the wearer’s feet,” Lady Victoria proudly announced as she
stroked a few, as if they were small spoiled mammals.
Another smiling maid, also shod in precipitous pumps, these of silver, knocked, before
wheeling in a high tea service. After she poured, she click-clacked out, her employer’s eyes
again fixed to the moving footwear, Emma noted.
“Well, some of them would certainly be useful navigating the aisles of the cinema
during the feature,” Mrs. Peel observed. “I must say your competitors, ah, those that remain, will be
hard-pressed to top you.”
“Oh, dear, yes,” the Lady intoned mournfully, “my four young friends—we were all on
the board of The Foot Foundation, ah! but, you know—so talented, so dedicated to making visual poetry
of the feet of the modern woman! Am I to believe the reports I’ve received? They were tickled to death?”
Mrs. Peel’s eyes narrowed, before she replied, “Each received a programmed mechanism
lethal to any tenderfoot. The killer has been methodically strolling down the list of board members.” She
elaborated, concluding with, “We believe you may be the next target.”
“Ho-ho, my child! Let ‘em try! It would take a genius of a tickler indeed to get me to
meet the Reaper,” hooted the statuesque blonde. “But, you said ‘programmed mechanisms’?”
“Yes,” replied Emma. “The killer knows cybernetics, biochemistry, and the frail anatomy of the human foot.”
“T.O.E.S!” shouted Lady Victoria, slapping her thigh.
“Well, yes,” Mrs. Peel returned with barely disguised exasperation. “The killer targets
toes.”
“No, no!” the Lady snapped. “ ‘Transform Our English Shoes! T.O.E.S. The research
firm that is a small part of the Foundation. Run by a chap named Steptoe, no less, and his niece. HIS
brother actually ran the place but passed on recently. They’re obsessed with the idea of scientifically
developing the most perfectly comfortable woman’s shoe. Mad as hares, the lot. They’ve been badgering
us lately for more funds for their projects. Very hi-tech. Very expensive. So misguided.” She gestured
proudly at her own creations. “They dismiss these works of great beauty.”
The shoe knocker at the front door resounded through the house. Mrs. Peel could
hear high heels click-clacking to the front door.
Her hostess continued, “Still, those Steptoes are clever with machines and computers,
and they’ll bore you to tears with all they know about women’s feet. ‘Seems as if THEY’RE your prime
suspects.”
Mrs. Peel then revealed Steed’s phone account of the attack on Stephanie Steptoe at
T.O.E.S. Lady Victoria finished a biscuit and drained her teacup before conceding, “I suppose that elimin-
ates them, then, eh?”
There was a knock, and both silver heels and golden heels entered bearing a large box
between them. “Milady, this gentleman has a special delivery from the Foundation.”
Mrs. Peel’s head jerked up from her teacup and her eyes flashed. Entering behind
the pumped-up pair was a small individual wearing dark eyeglasses under a black cap and above a black
jumpsuit. Both Lady Victoria and Mrs. Peel leaped to their feet.
“Dark, curly hair,” stage-whispered Lady Victoria as she moved towards the delivery
person.
“Dark, curly beard,” similarly spoke Mrs. Peel as she circled towards the man from the
other side.
The messenger’s mouth formed a perfect “O” and he turned tail and raced out of the manor. Mrs. Peel bolted after him. Lady Victoria followed, practically thrumming with pleasure as she shouted, “Wait for me, m’dear! I’m going to join in the chase!”
The beard reached the small van with the pink, little bare foot imprinted on each door, slammed within, and roared down the estate road. Emma practically jumped into her Lotus, waited
a long, impatient beat for Lady Victoria to squeeze her Amazon form into the passenger seat, and she
peeled off in pursuit.
“How exciting!” purred Lady Victoria, as Mrs. Peel exploited her roadster’s superior
handling to narrow the gap with her quarry . . .
*******
Steed, in his open canary Rolls, was also speedily on the move, with Martin Steptoe in the passenger seat.
“Oh, dear, I hope we aren’t too late,” moaned the little professor.
“She assured my . . . office that she could keep the device at bay. Her headquarters
is just beyond the bend.” Steed steered the Rolls up a service road, past a sign shaped like a horizontal boot
and bearing the cursive logo FOOTHUGGERS.
Steed pulled the Rolls before the door--along side was a smaller version of the road sign-- of a Victorian manse. The two men hurried within, and Steed’s call for Miss Piedsdeux was answered by
two cries from a room past the reception area. Within were two women, standing atop two chairs set upon a
desk on either side of a telephone. One women, a Rubenesque brunette, perhaps forty, was dressed in a long, brown woolen dress and was barefooted, with tangerine toenails. The other, far younger, barely out
her teens, was pale, thin, and blonde, sweating and shivering noticeably in a baby-blue turtleneck and bluejeans. On one of her smooth small alabaster feet the tiny toes bore red nails, the other blue nails. The
older woman was supporting the younger, who giggled musically occasionally, on the teetering perch.
The brunette shouted as the two men approached them, “Oh, mon Dieu! Help at last!
But look out! They’re looze in here zomevhere!”
Steed’s eyes darted around, the room’s semi-darkness punctuated by small lamps at
several desks. He could hear a skittering under one of the desks. Keeping his eyes pealed, he shouted,
“How many?”
“Two of ze nazty zings! Quick like ze hares. And zay teekal!” the brunette blurted,
shuddering.
“Careful, Steed!” cautioned Steptoe, who seemed about to jump onto a desk himself.
Something flashed beneath another desk, and Steed kicked away a swivel chair to
improve visibility. He heard a scrabbling, and saw a small shape retreating to the shadows. His hand
fell upon an object on one of the desks. It was a three-foot long mannequin leg, rather well “fleshed out,” down to its well-detailed arched foot and scarlet-painted toenails. Steed grabbed it by the lower thigh and
thrust it under the desk, towards the shape.
The shape jumped toward the leg, latching onto the foot. Steed withdrew the leg, and,
without hesitation, whirled and smashed the shape, still clinging to the toes of the leg, against a wall. There was a crunch, an electronic squeal, and a brief sparking. Steed brought the foot back and the shape, a pink, grapefruit-sized sphere with innumerable brush-tipped three-inch tentacles, rolled dead onto a desk.
He swiveled the desk’s lamp to examine the object more closely when the brunette
screamed, “Look out!”
Steptoe yelped and was kicking at something sliding towards him in front of the women’s
vantage point. Steed shouted, “Here, old boy!” and in one motion removed his bowler and hurled it to the
stomping Steptoe. The little man cried, “Oh!” caught it, and dropped suddenly to the floor, trapping the second tickley sphere under the bowler, which he held fast to the floor against the struggling device.
Steed carried a metal strong box from one of the desks, opened it, and dumped out its
contents. Then he knelt by Steptoe and the bowler, whispering, “All right, Professor. Let it go!” Steptoe
yanked up the hat and Steed deftly caught the sphere in the box, closing the lid and locking it.
“Phew!” Steed said. “Give me the old-fashioned boar hunt any old day!”
He and Steptoe received the giggly blonde from the brunette and eased her into a chair.
Steed then gallantly took the hand of the brunette and helped her down. “Oh, zank you!” she exclaimed
with obvious relief. “If you only knew what you saved us from…zose zings…our feet…”
Retrieving the dead sphere and laying it on the desk before them, next to the metal box
holding the captive live one, Steed murmured, “The most insidious device yet… portable…subtle…swift…
a danger to every ticklish spot on the body public. Mass production would mean…mass hysteria!”
Part Four
“Everyone else had gone home for zee day, Mr. Steed,” Madame Piedsdeux related, “when my apprentice Clare and I received zis zmall package from zis driver with zee dark curly hair…”
“…and zee dark curly beard and zee dark clothes who we’ve been zeek …seeking.”
Steed interjected, adding, “Didn’t you get our warning about this individual and the package he would
try to deliver?”
“Mais, oui—yes, but I am a leetle absent-minded, and I did not tell Clare. She received
ze parcel and, being zo young, impulsively opened eet. Ze pamphlet within said that zese zings were “Foot-
huggers,” designed to massage and relax the feet. Well, you know ze name of our firm…”
“So, obviously, does our mysterious villain.” Steed observed. “Sending you a package…”
“…zat we could not rezist opening,” she shuddered. “We followed ze operating instructions—and zay came alive. You know, Mr. Steed, ve are very…footloose here; ve all work in our
bare feet. Zo it was easy for these crawly zings to grab onto our feet and start snaking their feelers between
our toes and along our soles. Oooo, eet was agony!: lol I was about to surrender to laughter, when I managed to dislodge my hugger.
“Clare was not zo lucky. Hers hung on longer, and eet beet her.”
“Bit her?” asked Steptoe.
“Oui. See the little spot of blood on her beeg toe,” pointed out the Frenchwoman.
Steed held up Clare’s right foot, and she shrieked amidst her simmering giggles. There
was a tiny puncture wound on her toe. “This is where some drugs were administered,” he said.
“Iz zat why she is ztill zo happy, even after I managed to beat the leetle beast off her
foot?” asked Madame Piedsdeux.
“Yes,” Steed mused, “although if you hadn’t acted so heroically, this young woman would have soon laughed herself to death, as previous victims have.”
“Sacres chats!”
“Steed, I want to get this device back to the laboratory,” interjected Steptoe. “for
analysis. Maybe I can tell you who made it. Will you take me there?”
“Ladies, if you’ll excuse us,” Steed said, touching the brim of his bowler, “we must
press on.” Then, to himself, he muttered, “I wonder how Mrs. Peel is faring…”
******
After a spirited chase over hill and dale, Mrs. Peel and Lady Victoria were practically riding the bumper of the fleeing van. The van’s incapacity to take a certain sweeping curve tightly
allowed Mrs. Peel to maneuver alongside it and force it off road into a shallow ditch. The slight, hirsute
driver stumbled out and tried to lose his pursuers in a wood. However, the lanky Emma outlegged her
prey and, grabbing his shoulders, spun him around and delivered a stunning karate blow to the neck. His
cap and sunglasses flying away, he staggered into her arms. Grasping his chin to fix his identity, she was
flummoxed to find his copious curly black whiskers coming away in her hand, revealing quite smooth
girlish features. The dark curls above were askew, and she pulled them off to reveal sandy tresses falling
out of a tight bun. Her handhold on the slumping figure’s chest confirmed what was apparent: the delivery
“man” was, in fact, a wisp of a young woman.
Mrs. Peel was pondering this when she felt a hard blow at the base of her skull and crumpled to the leafy ground, unconscious. Above her stood the imperious figure of Lady Victoria, smiling smugly, holding a gold slipper with its heavy heel, and, shaking off the effects of Mrs. Peel’s blow, the grim gamine Stephanie Steptoe.
******
The small van with the bare feet painted on its doors was pulling away from the abandoned Lotus Elan when a phone in Mrs. Peel’s handbag chirped and trilled. Driving in his Rolls
with Prof. Steptoe, who was holding the metal strongbox containing the captured “foothugger” on his
lap, Steed was holding a palm phone to his ear.
“Strange. Mrs. Peel doesn’t answer,” Steed shouted over the roaring engine.
“I wouldn’t worry, Steed,” shouted Steptoe, a shadow seeming to pass over his features.
“I’m sure she’s in very good hands.”
Mrs. Peel awakened through a haze of pain to focus her eyes on a surrounding array of computers, mechanical and chemical apparatus, and a few industrial robots slowly tottering about on high-
heeled shoes. She was quite firmly restrained in a raised examination chair: a leather strap holding her fore-
head firmly to a headrest, plastic cuffs binding her forearms to armrests and her shins to leg rests declining
at 45 degrees. A moment’s testing convinced her that she wasn’t going to force her way free.
“Awake at last, eh?” observed the former little deliveryman, now entering her field of vision as a pert young lady clad in a sleeveless, thigh-length floral-print dress and white clogs.
Mrs. Peel met her brown eyes and chuckled, “For a committed cross-dresser, you do get
around!”
“A necessary masquerade for an avenger, Mrs. Peel,” said the gamine.
“Oh? I rarely go in for it myself,” cracked Emma. “Allow me to indulge in some deduction. You must be Stephanie Steptoe. When Steed called me from the base of your T.O.E.S.,
he neglected to mention your beard. But he did mention your encounter with the Box. A sham, I guess.
Part of your efforts to keep us from concluding that you are responsible for these lethal ticklings.” She
raised her voice theatrically, adding, “Isn’t that correct, Lady Victoria?”
Stepping into her view, the gold-clad, mature Amazon laughed and said, “I must say,
Mrs. Peel, that you’re frightfully bright for someone who allowed herself to be so easily shanghaied.”
“I suspected you were a player, and not a prospective victim, my Lady,” said Emma, with a smirk, “when you let slip that the victims had been tickled to death. The press releases had only stated
that the designers died from heart failure. I was only to happy to have you tail along with me in the hope
that you would reveal your hand. Unfortunately,” she soberly noted, “I was taken aback by Miss Steptoe’s
disguise, and well, … YOU took me ABACK!”
“Ah-ha-ha-ha! You really are unflappable!” the Lady volleyed. “More’s the pity that you
are about to die. Still let me reassure you that in your absence, we’ll, ah, make sure the remaining
Foundation board members exit laughing. And, then …when THE SHOE SHOW BY THE SEASHORE
opens in Brighton on Saturday, Ms. Steptoe here and I will represent the vanguard of ladies’ shoe design
and begin a new age of British hegemony in global footwear fashion. Her technical contributions …”
“My dear father’s legacy,” interjected Stephanie, with a quaver in her voice.
“Yes, my dear,” continued Lady Victoria. “His loving bequest skillfully adapted by you
and combined with my uncanny sense of style will …”
“Let me guess,” Mrs. Peel chimed. “Rule the world?” Lady Victoria chuckled in satisfied
acknowledgement.
“Oh, enough of this talk!” Stephanie cried, growing hysteria glowing in her eyes. “Let’s
finish her off and get back to vindicating my poor father.” She grasped Mrs. Peel’s chin and shined her
madness into Emma’s orbs. “They laughed at my father at the Board meetings of The Foot Foundation.
Then they ruthlessly denied him the funds necessary to finish his work: the realization of the perfect pair of woman’s shoes, comfortable and durable, in which the 21st Century woman could realize her destiny. These
silly, frilly hedonists drove him prematurely to his death, but, thanks to Lady Victoria’s generosity and
understanding, we are removing them and placing my father’s work squarely in the mainstream of the
global marketplace.”
“I think I preferred you with a beard,” Emma mused. “It lent you a taciturn quality.”
“Go ahead, Mrs. Peel. Laugh!” shouted Stephanie. “We’ll see to it that the few remaining
minutes of your life are choked with laughter!”
“Why don’t you see to the necessary device, my dear?” Lady Victoria purred to the intense younger woman, as if to a disturbed child. Stephanie struggled to calm her breathing, and disappeared through a rear doorway.
“She doesn’t know you the way I do, does she?” sang Mrs. Peel with her right eyebrow
arched. “She doesn’t know your true opinion of T.O.E.S. I quote, ‘Mad as hares, the lot.’ And ‘so misguided.’ You’re manipulating that poor, grief-maddened waif.”
Lady Victoria knelt between the chair’s footrests and, peering up at her captive, unzipped Mrs. Peel’s ankle boots. She was rather ceremonially pulling the boots off one-by-one as she
said, “Sometimes it is necessary in business to enlist unlikely partners in pursuit of growth, and to motivate
those partners appropriately.”
“Behind your golden sheen, you are one cold bitch,” observed Emma.
“Ah, but your feet are pleasingly warm,” chuckled the Lady, as she hovered her hands
over Emma’s pink-soled peds as if over an open fire. “The one positive attribute of your utilitarian footwear is that it renders your feet tantalizingly tender, so open to teasing.” She waved her long, gold-polished nails over the naked soles. Mrs. Peel steeled herself admirably, but could not quite contain the
twitching of her toes and her mouth at the light touch. The blonde continued, “Advanced technology in the
service of tickling is all very well, but I prefer a traditional hands-on approach myself.”
And with a sigh-enfolded chuckle and a quite sincere smile, Lady Victoria commenced
to skillfully play her nails and the pads of her fingertips upon Emma’s helpless feet. As her captor stroked
along her toes, slid along her insteps, circled her heels, and cruised the outer edges towards a pirouette upon the rosy balls, Mrs. Peel found her control eroding until giggles escaped her lips. Full-throated laughter soon followed when her tormentor bent back her toes and scratched deftly under and between them.
“Mmm-mmm-oh-mmm-oh-mmnn-no-ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-mmm-mmm-ha-ha-ha-heh!” : lol
“I just knew that behind your prepossession of cool competence, Mrs. Peel, was a tender
soul, so to speak,” the tall tickler teased. “A tender soul betrayed by her tender soles, eh? Tickle, tickle, tickle …”
Through her teary laughter, Mrs. Peel could see Stephanie returning with a wooden-and-
metal box, identical to the one that had tickled Moira Dancer to death, identical down to the silhouette
footprints on the top. She placed it on the floor next to the kneeling Lady, who begrudgingly stopped her
manual tickling and helped her slide the box just below Mrs. Peel’s extended feet.
“You’ll find, Mrs. Peel,” Stephanie coolly expounded, as she pulled a cloth gag tightly across Emma’s mouth, tying the fabric behind the headrest, “that this box, unlike the ‘sham’ box I
endured, includes a dose of the sensitizing drug which will readily turn its programmatic tickling of your
bare feet into a heart-stopping experience.”
“I’m sorry it must be this way, my dear,” Lady Victoria conceded as she aided her
young ally in loosening the leg cuffs and lowering their still giddy victim’s feet onto the footprints,” but
we must make it appear that you had an unfortunate encounter with the fiendish box of a masked murderer,
who fled, leaving us helpless to keep you from laughing your way to the Beyond …”
“Mur-mur-mur-mur-ghu-ruh-ruh-eee!” sounded Mrs. Peel, regaining her faculties
at last and casting her eyes across the room. Her two captors stood and turned to find Steed and Steptoe, the latter still bearing the metal strongbox, which he soon placed on a lab table, entering the room
and approaching the three women.
“I’m delighted to see you as well, Mrs. Peel,” beamed Steed, grasping the trunk of his
umbrella in his left hand, and about to unsheathe the sword within with his right.
“Do not deploy that hidden blade, Mr. Steed,” said an officious voice behind him that might have been Marvin Steptoe’s but for the absence of his usual dithering. The mop-headed professor
was pressing a pistol into the small of Steed’s back, continuing, “Drop the umbrella and, without any
sudden gesture, put your hands upon your head and move smoothly against the wall. Then turn and face
the hilarious execution of your colleague. Proceed, my dear.”
“Y-yes, uncle?” said his now uncertain niece, bending to kneel again at Mrs. Peel’s feet.
“He’s hardly your uncle, Miss Steptoe,” Steed announced. “The handkerchief in his
pocket bears the monogram “HS.” Just when did you intend to reveal to your daughter that you still lived, Professor Harold Steptoe?”
“F-father …?” stammered a stunned Stephanie, standing and reaching out to the man she’d believed dead.
“Your father engineered the timely death of your highly-strung, soft-hearted Uncle
Martin,” continued Steed, hammering at Stephanie, “ his twin, and assumed his identity. The better to
enlist you, his grieving daughter, in the plot hatched between himself and his lover, Lady Victoria. They
hoped both to monopolize the ladies’ fashionable shoe industry and demonstrate to certain international terrorist organizations the efficacy of a number of tickling devices, combining his cybernetic skill with
your researches into ladies’ pedal sensitivity.”
“Me and Vicki?” blurted Steptoe. “How did you …”
“The phone call I took here from my darling Mother, telling me about a news photograph
at the funeral of ‘Harold’ Steptoe, depicting ‘Martin’ Steptoe and Lady Victoria Healey holding hands
in ‘grief,’ leading us to suspect that these erstwhile antagonists on the board of The Foot Foundation had
formed an alliance.” Steed was ever so imperceptibly edging away from the wall.
“You, Father, and Lady Victoria?” whimpered Stephanie, beginning to stagger over to
where her father stood holding the gun distractedly on Steed.
Truly moved, Steptoe met his daughter’s weeping eyes, and uttered, “Stephanie, my lone
regret has been deceiving you …”
“Oh, Harold!” spat Lady Victoria. “The little idiot would only have interfered if we hadn’t focussed her mind on your ‘death.’ She’s useless to us now.”
“Shut up!” screeched Stephanie as she leaped at the golden Lady. Mrs. Peel extended
her foot and tripped up the young brunette, causing her to stumble and step onto the Box, which greedily
accepted her clog-clad feet that happened to land on the footprints. Her white clogs were ejected, leaving
her small, soft white-stocking feet, following a prick on her right big toe, to suffer the merciless tickling
of a multitude of microbrushes. She fell back, bouncing on her buttocks on the floor as she howled with
laughter.
“No-no-no-aieee!-ih-ih-ih-ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-help!-heh-heh-heh-heh-<shriek!>” :lol
Simultaneous to Stephanie’s rapid undoing, Mrs. Peel caught Lady Victoria in a pincer
move with her legs, holding the stunned tall blonde tightly.
Steed, taking advantage of Steptoe’s shock, grasped his bowler and flung it across the room. The hat’s reinforced brim struck hard the little professor’s hand, causing him to drop the pistol, and immediately Steed was upon him. The two grappled briefly across the room, before Steed’s superior size and fighting skill allowed him to disengage Steptoe and send him hurtling into a group of the
teetering robots. The professor with a shout fell amongst them, and their heavy frames collapsed upon him, sending forth a shower of sparks. Steptoe had been mashed.
Meanwhile, to the accompaniment of Stephanie’s increasingly frantic laughter, Lady
Victoria, realizing she couldn’t pry Mrs. Peel’s strong legs open, resorted to savagely tickling her bare
feet. Emma, still woozy from her earlier tickling ordeal, yelped and loosened her hold, which the Lady escaped from. She was scrambling on the floor for Steptoe’s dropped pistol when Steed, hastening to the
metal strongbox Steptoe had left on the lab table, flipped it open and hurled it at the blonde as she closed
her hand on the gun.
The box struck her squarely on the back, bowling her over. She lost her grip on the gun,
and both of her golden slippers, as well. She was just rising to her knees when she felt something entwine
her left foot tightly. It was the pink, plastic tentacled ball, the sight and touch of which caused her to scream
and claw at her golden silk-stocking foot. She felt a sharp pain on one of her toes and soon began to experience a warm flood of light-headedness and giggles bubbling up her throat. She had achieved a weaving standing position when the balls’ flexible feelers began to vibrate along her silken sole and
poke between her very tender toes. She exploded with giggles become full-bore laughter, and haplessly
tried to shake the “foothugger” off.
By now, Steed had released Mrs. Peel from her bondage, and the two were trying to
aid Stephanie, whose teary, red face was contorted with her screams of laughter and desperate gasps for
air. As the box applied her own program of an almost unlimited variety of minute brushing upon her immobilized nyloned soles, she danced on her buns helplessly. : lol Steed had recovered his umbrella,
and was trying to duplicate his previous breaching of the box’s defenses. Mrs. Peel was futilely pulling
the trapped brunette’s legs.
Finally, just when Stephanie’s laughter reached a point of gurgling silence, Steed
succeeded in penetrating the box and damaging its works. As it sparked and smoked, its hold on Stephanie
loosened, and Mrs. Peel was able to pull her giggling form free. Steed and Emma hovered over the prone
form of the girl until they were assured that she was breathing freely and was merely sliding into a merciful unconsciousness . . .
Only then did the Avengers turn and witness Lady Victoria, her large, sleek gilded
form contorted with hysterical laughter : lol, fall against a large picture window of the laboratory. Before
they could reach her, she crashed through the glass and, still clutching at the relentless device wiggling
its tickley tentacles across her hypersensitive sole, tumbled to the unyielding parking lot below.
Peering down at her unmoving form, Steed and Mrs. Peel exchanged a glance. She shook
her head and observed, “ So much laughter, and all at the drop of a hat,” as Steed winced.
Coda
On a private, relatively uncrowded sunny beach at Brighton, Steed, looking quite fit in
his flattering Pierre Cardin swimming trunks, was just finishing burying Mrs. Peel-- only her head
and wiggling bare feet uncovered-- in the sand.
“There,” he announced, “the construction project has been completed.”
“I must say,” Emma said, straining slightly, “I-huhrumph-can’t budge under these
countless grains. What shall we do about lunch?”
“Fret not, dear lady,” he orated, as he reached for a large straw basket behind her head.
“You shall not go without nourishment as you serve the cause of beach architecture.”
Pulling off a cloth atop the basket and laying it with a snap on the sand next to Mrs.
Peel’s head as she lay, contemplating the azure sky, Steed begin inventorying the contents, placing each
item on the cloth. “Hearty Midlands Stilton, smoked Scottish salmon, cold Highlands pheasant, crusty,
whole-grain Welsh bread, assorted pickles and condiments, all complimented by, I must say, as I per-
sonally selected it, an especially vintage Champagne. Here are two glasses, and, oh, my …”
“What? Wait, don’t tell me!” Mrs. Peel exclaimed, her head turned so her nose was
twitching mere inches from the plate of salmon. “You forgot utensils!”
“Sadly, yes,” he admitted. “At least if we had a knife, anything with a useful blade—
Wait! I think there’s something at the bottom of our basket with a good blade!”
He reached into the basket and extracted a large goose quill, which he brandished
in front of Emma’s eyes, which filled with delayed, alarmed recognition.
“Now, Steed…” she intoned, nervously.
“You know, you may be right, Mrs. Peel,” he happily conceded. “This blade won’t
be of much use at this end.” He paused momentously before getting to his feet and proceeding to the
sea end of the sandpile. “However, it will prove very handy down here.”
“Steed, what about lunch?” Mrs. Peel cried, desperately craning her neck.
“Of course, Mrs. Peel,” Steed sang, as he sat at her flailing bare feet. “How about an
appetizer?” And he began sawing the quill between her uncharacteristically helpless toes …: lol
In my dreams, the following credits (with selections made from across time) for this episode roll, as Laurie Johnson’s jaunty AVENGERS theme sees us home:
JOANNA LUMLEY (circa 1992) as Lady Victoria Healey
(I couldn’t resist pitting Diana Rigg’s Mrs. Peel against one of Steed’s
absolutely fabulous later partners.)
PATRICK TROUGHTON (circa 1968) as Professor Steptoe
(I borrowed the late 2nd Doctor Who’s knack for playing comic and villainous
characters.)
HELENA BONHAM CARTER (circa 1987) as Stephanie Steptoe
(petite but powerful)
MOIRA SHEARER (circa 1960) as Moira Dancer
(This is an homage to Ms. Shearer’s shocking fate in Michael Powell’s
PEEPING TOM.)
JOAN GREENWOOD (circa 1951) as Grace Walker
(Ms. Greenwood, the actress with the sexiest voice in British cinema, would
have played Lady V., but for her diminutive stature.)
BETTE MIDLER (today) as Claudette Piedsdeux
(Like I need an excuse to cast the divine one.)
TWIGGY (circa 1967) as Clare
(I wanted one icon of the Mod period.)
MICHAEL CRAWFORD (circa 1965) as Noel
(Yeah, I know this is an insultingly small part for The Phantom, but I wanted
to get his goofy 60’s persona, as seen in THE KNACK, in somewhere.)
LINDA THORSON (circa 1969) as the leggy secretary
(It’s about time we all forgave Ms. Thorson for not being Diana Rigg.)
I would like this scenario directed by ROBERT FUEST, who helmed some darkly
amusing AVENGERS episodes and gave us the ghastly slapstick of Dr. Phibes.
Written by TEE HEE LAWRENCE (who is no Brian Clemens)
Patrick Macnee’s feather provided by THE TICKLING MEDIA FORUM.
*I believe that Canal + Image UK, Inc. hold the copyright to THE AVENGERS and
the characters of John Steed and Emma Peel. I offer this fannish tickle tale with all due respect for the
characters and the copyright holder and with no intention whatsoever of accruing any monetary gain.
*Dedicated with great fondness to Brian Clemens, co-producer and yeoman telewriter
of THE AVENGERS. Anyone who has enjoyed such classics as “The House That Jack Built” and “Epic”
is welcome to tip his/her bowler and twirl his/her umbrella or unzip his/her Emmapeelers in assent.
*Gee, what if Stanley Kubrick had used “Make ‘Em Laugh” instead of “Singin’ in the
Rain” in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE . . .
*Hisses or kisses to [email protected] .
*Now, open a bottle of champagne, fill your glass nearly to the brim, and kick back . . .
Prologue
Moira Dancer entered the offices of Fabulous Fashion Footwear and was wished a
sincere “Good morning!” by every person she met as she navigated the central corridor to the executive suite. This was not unusual, as the fashionably tall and trim 42-year old redhead was the President and
Chief Executive Officer of this firm, an up-and-coming darling of the shopping malls and the London
Exchange. Her smile to each greeting was automatic, but, as was her custom, she was preoccupied with
a pressing matter, and virtually looked through her employees as they hailed her.
She strode into the anteroom of her suite, and received from her assistant Noel a greeting, a cup of Jamaican coffee, light, no sugar, and a folder filled with the morning’s schedule, the daily statements, and correspondences requiring her immediate attention. He also informed her that a delivery person was placing a large package that very moment in her office. Indeed, as Moira stepped into her
sanctum, said person—tipping his cap to her—was stepping out. The deliverer— a slightly-built person with long black curly hair and a full curly beard, wearing a dark cap pulled low, reflective sunglasses,
and a dark jumpsuit-- stopped at the desk, waited as Noel signed a form on a clipboard, croaked a “Thank
ya’, luv,” and departed.
In the office, as she sat at her desk sipping her coffee, Moira noted that the package, measuring about 15 inches square and resting on the carpet, bore a return address. She donned her wide,
dark-rimmed glasses and saw that it came from THE FOOT FOUNDATION, an organization upon
whose Board of Directors she sat. She was curious, but, noting it was quarter past nine, straightened up at her desk, plunged into her paperwork and entered into her series of a.m. appointments. The box was the source of a few attempts at humor by her visitors, but otherwise escaped her notice until the last meeting ended, right about noontime.
Removing her glasses and setting them on her desk, Moira rose and stretched. She then
informed Noel that she was not to be disturbed for 30 minutes. She slipped a CD into the player on the
shelf behind her desk, and the soundtrack of the American musical film SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN began its
opening credits theme. She sat in her chair again and rolled it from behind the desk so that she could at
last closely examine the large package.
Carefully slitting it open with a handy, company-embossed shoe knife, she lifted out of
the carton another box, almost as big, whose exterior of gray metal and burnished wood trim was otherwise featureless except for two black footprints silhouetted on the roof. A small envelope fluttered
to the floor. She retrieved it and extracted a note card which, in raised letters, stated, “ A present from
a fond admirer at the Foot Foundation.” She wondered, grazing her lower lip with the card, which acquaint-
ance at the Foundation could be the source.
She peered into the outer carton to see if it offered any clues as to the origins and to
the purpose of the inner box. There at the bottom of the carton was a modest pamphlet. It explained that
the metal and wooden object was “The Happy Feet Automated Shoeshine Box: the modern essential which
shines your shoes while you wear them—safely, efficiently, completely adjusting to the size, fit, style, and
color of your footwear with computer precision.” Moira smiled; some salesman no doubt used a Foundation member to get an endorsement from her.
Still, she mused, eyeing her feet, clad in sheer hose and next season’s burgundy FFF pumps, it couldn’t hurt to give the Company wares a spruce-up. She read further that “It is only necessary to sit facing the Box and to place one’s shod feet upon the footprints on its surface. This completely automated wonder will do the rest.” Well, it was a no-lose situation, Moira thought.
Sitting back in her chair, she raised her feet and placed each upon the corresponding
silhouette on the box. A click and a whir could be heard, and her peds in pumps descended into the box.
Then, another click, and a padded flange tightened around each leg, just above the ankle. Moira started,
trying in vain to remove her feet, which were caught fast.
Behind her, her sound system blared with Donald O’Connor singing “Make ‘Em Laugh”;
There was no fear of disturbing anyone outside, as her office walls and doors were solidly soundproofed.
The box whirred again, and Moira gasped as she felt her pumps being slid off of her
stocking feet. She saw them ejected from the far side of the box and landing askew upon the carpet.
Another click sounded, and she felt a pinprick on her right big toe, which caused her to shout, “Oh!”
She immediately felt a little light-headed, a little . . . giddy, and very . . . amused.
Thus, when further whirs sounded and she felt the many, many microbrushes begin to
insidiously stroke atop, under, and between her nyloned toes, along her barely covered instep, and across
her sheer-coated heel, Moira began laughing with a helpless abandon. Her cries for help from her staff
outside were lost in an outpouring of giggles. Her attempts to grab her calves and pull her stocking
feet free of the box were weakened by her hilarious shudders.: lol
The box engaged in a seemingly endless series of brush arrangements, revolution speeds,
and intensities of application. Each one seemed to elicit more hysteria from the helpless Moira Dancer, who, red-faced, with her make-up streaming down her cheeks, fought more and more desperately for
breath, as she laughed and laughed, until—
She gurgled her last and fell back into her chair. The box whirred and clicked once
more—and was quiescent. Donald O’Connor climaxed his song, “ Make . . . ‘em . . . laugh!”
THE AVENGERS
Starring Patrick Macnee as John Steed
and Diana Rigg as Mrs. Emma Peel
in
A GRAVE, TICKLISH MATTER
Steed follows the laughter.
Emma bares her sole.
by Tee Hee Lawrence
Part One
Emma Peel was dozing in the chair when her pedicurist announced that she was done and left to serve another patron. Mrs. Peel reached up to pull her long, auburn hair from her eyes and leaned
forward to inspect the beautician’s handiwork. She beheld black block letters printed on the sky blue polish
on some of her toenails. The letters spelled, “Mrs. Peel . . .”
Suddenly, John Steed was standing in front of her and leaning on his umbrella, beaming
and intoning, “ . . . we’re needed.”
Steed was still beaming and leaning on his umbrella as Mrs. Peel rotated once in the late
Moira Dancer’s chair before fixing her attention on the large box with a pair of burgundy high heels set in
the footprint silhouettes on top.
Mrs. Peel mused, “The victim died of heart failure . . .”
“—apparently induced by prolonged laughter.” Steed continued, “She is the third such
victim—all top female footwear designers—this week.”
“The previous two received similar packages?” Mrs. Peel queried as she lifted the shoes
and passed her hand over the footprints on the box.
“On Monday, Mrs. Kalinda Hall, 34, of SMASHING SHOES, LTD., Dorchester received a pair of high boots which she donned . . .”
“—and never removed, laughing herself to death?” Mrs. Peel offered.
Steed winced as he said, “Tiny, mechanized brushes set in the boot soles. Result: heart
failure.”
Emma peered into one of the shoes, asking, “Tuesday?”
“Miss Manuela Cortes, 38, formerly of Valencia, Spain, more recently head of ANGLO-
IBERIAN SANDALS, Wapping, received a pair of tied-high-on-the-calves platform sandals, which promised, electronically, a foot-soothing massage.”
“She was tickled pink by the pair?” Emma was removing one of her own ankle boots
and trying one of the victim’s pumps for size.
“Pinpoint pulses of stimulation delivered to selected areas of her soles until her heart
beat its last.”
Mrs. Peel rested her high-heeled foot on one of the box’s silhouettes. A click sounded,
the silhouette gave way, and she yanked her foot away. Peering into the box’s works, she asked. “Did any of the three have a medical history indicating coronary vulnerability?”
“Hale and hearty, they laughed at their mortality—so to speak—the three of them.” Steed inserted his umbrella tip into the box.
“Then, how does one explain the apparent ease with which they were tickled to death
by these devices?” There was a crunch and Emma knotted her forehead as Steed raised his umbrella.
A circle of tiny brushes ringed the tip of the umbrella, which Steed studied.
He reached into his breast pocket and produced a small glassine envelope holding 3 thin, inch-long plastic
tubes, each of which bore a short hypodermics needle. This he handed to Emma, saying, “Found in
the works of each murder weapon. Source of the solution which autopsies revealed in the bloodstream of
each victim. Analysis indicated, among other elements, a concentrated nitrous oxide derivative and a violent nerve stimulant."
“So they were primed for a fatal tickling. Charming!” Mrs. Peel shuddered as she picked up the note card from the desk and considered it. “Did the other victims receive similar salutations?”
“The same.” Steed removed his bowler and extracted like two note cards from the inner
lining. Reading, he intoned, “A present from a fond admirer . . .”
“… at THE FOOT FOUNDATION,” read Grace Walker from the note card she’d
pulled from the small carton just delivered. She was swallowing, compulsively one after the other, a series
of vitamin tablets, between sips of ginger-infused, green tea. “I wonder who…”
She heard a throat clearing, and looked up from her desk at a slightly built delivery person with abundant black curly hair and beard under a black cap and wearing reflective sunglasses and a black jumpsuit. “I’m sorry, you need—ah!” She signed next to her name on a list on a clipboard. “’Looks
like you’re delivering to all the FF board. I’d better see what the competition’s getting, eh?”
The delivery person smiled, touched his cap, and croaked a “Thank ya, luv,” and left
the cottage. He boarded a small van, unmarked except for a small pink bare foot imprinted on each
of its two doors, and, casting a smirk at the cottage, drove rapidly away.
Within her studio in the cottage, Grace turned up the television beside her worktable,
festooned with design sketches of women’s shoes. A health talk show host was interviewing the author of a
book extolling the healing power of laughter.
“So you would recommend that the public laugh often?”
“Oh, yes, it should be in the daily regimen as much as drinking plenty of water and
exercising aerobically.”
The 28-year-old Grace sported a close-cropped cap of straw-colored hair, deep blue
eyes and full red cheeks atop her five-foot, five-inch, 140 lb. frame. She was dressed in a white sweat-
shirt bearing the name of her young, up-and-coming shoe manufactory, HER BEST FOOT FORWARD. Her wrists jangled with electromagnetic copper bracelets, and an aura-stimulating crystal pendant dangled
between her breasts.
She’d been working almost without rest since Monday, not even checking her phone or computer for messages, on her new line of killer, fuck-me pumps, which would incorporate glitter suspended in an aqueous solution in the toe, heel and sole. Indeed, she was wearing a prototype pair now, and her bare feet were a little tender and weary as a result.
“How much laughter fulfills the minimum daily requirement?” inquired the talk show
host.
“It’s not simply how much one laughs, but how well,” cautioned the author.
So, she figured she deserved a break and was grateful for the excuse to examine the
slim package before her. From some bubble wrap, she removed what looked like two athletic shoes,
each with a synthetic human hand hanging from the sole. In one of the shoes was rolled a pamphlet which
revealed that these were “Radio-activated Reflexologists: The revolutionary relaxation
miracle which you activate at the touch of a button. Simply put on the shoes and, using the palm-sized
control, direct the precision fingertips to press the points on your soles which stimulate different areas of
your body.”
“Cool!” chortled Grace, and she fished in the package and extracted the bubble-wrapped
control unit. Soon she was seated cross-legged at her work table with each bare foot within a hand-bearing
shoe, and she was waving her thumb over the control nestled in her right palm. It seemed simple enough:
a round button marked “on” above a schematic of a foot with a dozen tiny button set within. Each button
was marked for a different body part, e.g., “neck” or “stomach.”
“The author droned on, “One should endeavor to find ways to provoke laughter—jokes, cartoons, reading Wodehouse, listening to the Goons, reading the letters to the TIMES…”
Grace pressed the “on” button. A low hum emanated from the shoes, then she felt a
strong tightening at her ankles. “What th--!” She felt a sharp pinprick on each big toe. “Ow-uh! Damn!”
A flushed feeling, accompanied by an urge to giggle immediately flooded her. The sole of each
shoe retracted into the heel. The fingers of the underhanging hands began to lightly stroke Grace’s toes and upon the balls of her soles.
“…any means to get you really laughing,” concluded the author.
Grace rolled off her chair, screaming with laughter, “No-no-no-ah-ha-ha-ha-eeyah-ha!”
Even unlaced, the shoes would not slide off her feet. She tried to pry the hands off her soles, but they
were firmly attached to the shoes, and were too strong to be deterred by her own fingers. Furthermore, they
now concentrated on stroking under and between her toes, tormenting the tender flesh therein lightly but
but most purposefully. The tickling stopped and started again and again in a random, maddening pattern.
Her attempts to turn off the shoes by depressing the “on” button on the control proved futile. :lol
Her laughter rose to a pitch that soon drowned out the televised interview. Within
a few more minutes, though, her face was contorted in silent, red-faced hilarious agony, and she struggled
to inhale as the voices from the television returned …
“Would you recommend tickling as a healthful activity?” asked the host.
The author pursed his lips and answered, “In moderation, a little bit of tickling never
hurt anyone…”
Under the table, beyond moderation, beyond any earthly care, Grace was still, her hands
clutching one of her new pumps, glitter floating, flashing in its heel …
Part Two
Steed and Mrs. Peel peered over the top of the tilted worktable, he eyeing the fatal athletic shoes, she the glitter pumps. Both pairs were hanging from the table’s attached lamp.
“Note card?” she asked.
“Exactly like the others, down to the filigree,” he responded. “Our lateness proved
fatal to the late Ms. Walker. I think it’s time for us to divide this list of the remaining Foot Foundation
board members…”
“One of who apparently is a murderer,” Emma ventured as she took the list from
Steed. “I’ll pay a visit to Lady Victoria Healey—and warn her that any delivery by a curly-haired
person is to be regarded as a laughing matter. Hmm… or not.”
“And I,” considered Steed, “will seek out T.O.E.S.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“T-O-E-S,” Steed read from the list, “which stands for…”
“…Transform Our English Shoes, Mr. Steed,” slowly enunciated the short bespectacled
gentleman in the lab smock who had entered the T.O.E.S. office waiting room. He had a mop of dark
hair and a toothy smile; the smock was too big for him, and the sleeves crawled halfway down his hands.
He wore a black armband on one arm. “I’m Steptoe.”
“Oh?” Steed resisted the urge to quip.
“Yes, Prof. Martin Steptoe. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. The organization has been in turmoil these two months since the death of my twin brother, Harold.” He directed Steed’s gaze to a
portrait hanging next to the receptionist’s desk. “He was the real heart and, ahem, soul of T.O.E.S, his unique genius suddenly snuffed out by a fatal stroke no doubt precipitated by implacable mounting stress.
His daughter Stephanie and I have been endeavoring to continue his work, but it has been difficult.
Our operating funds have been diminishing. We face a threat!”
Steed had been studying a Chinese woodblock print of foot binding hanging on the wall
near the attractive receptionist’s desk. “ Oh, I didn’t realize you’d been informed…”
“Yes, a threat, Mr. Steed. The modern Englishwoman’s shoes are torture chambers,” Mr. Steptoe declaimed, as he rested his hand on a medieval torture boot resting on a pedestal. “Squashing the toes, mashing the heel, pinching the ball, they reduce women to a constant state of ill-temper, lowering
productivity …”
“…straining intimate relationships…” Steed added helpfully, as he considered a pair
of five-inch stiletto heels with equally sharp toes resting on another pedestal close to the very attractive
receptionist’s desk.
“…a threat to the health and well being of the entire nation,” intoned Steptoe. “That is why the recent cutback of funds from fellow members in The Foot Foundation has been so painful.”
“No more so, surely, than the cutback in board members of said Foundation,” said
Steed.
“Eh?”
“Four members have received delivery of deadly devices bearing a Foundation note card.”
“D-delivery, did you say?” Steptoe asked, as he looked to the door through which he’d
entered the room.
Suddenly from beyond that door came a woman’s shriek and hysterical laughter. Steed
lost his bowler as he burst into a large room outfitted with many computers running calculations and
robots walking on high-heeled women’s shoes. Amidst the various apparatus, a short, young woman with
long sandy tresses was seated with her feet trapped in a familiar-looking box—and she was laughing help-
lessly, desperately. A few feet before the box lay askew a pair of sensible loafers.
“Ha-ha-ha-h-help m-me, uncle! Ha-ha-ha!…”she screamed. “T-turn it off! Ah-ha-ha…”
: lol
Steed extracted the steel sword cane from his umbrella and placed its point against one of the closed openings in the front of the box, from which, no doubt, the shoes had been ejected. With all his strength, he inserted it under the panel and wedged it open. Then, he plunged the cane down into the bottom of the box beneath the woman’s tortured feet, and jerked it violently until the box’s mechanism seized, and became quiet.
The flanges opened atop the box, and Steed and Steptoe helped the whimpering brunette
remove her stocking feet from within. She sat her five-foot, two inch, 100-lb frame, clad in a lab smock over a mid-thigh flower print dress, back in her rolling chair, breathing heavily, and proffered a note card to her uncle.
“Stephanie! Are you all right?” Steptoe moaned. “What-what is this? Where did it
come from? This note: an admirer from the Foot Foundation? But, who?”
She stared at the floor, saying, “A few minutes ago, at the back door, a delivery by…”
“A curly-haired and bearded person wearing a cap and dark glasses,” offered Steed.
“Why, yes!” marveled Stephanie. “How did you know?”
Steed smiled and stared with pleasure into her deep eyes, saying, “Let me explain…”
Having done so, he made calls to, first—next on the list--Claudette Piedsdeux at FOOT-
HUGGERS, setting a four o’clock appointment, and then, Mrs. Peel, who was en route to Lady Victoria’s
estate. Stephanie, seeming to prick her ears at the conversations, pleaded tickle trauma and, putting on
her shoes, announced her need to go right home to bed, and, refusing Steed’s gallant offer of escort, left.
Steptoe unfurled a handkerchief from his pocket, Steed making note of the monogram.
Mopping his brow and shaking his head ruefully, the diminutive professor muttered, “Poor child. She’s a
brilliant, 22-year-old scientist, perhaps even more gifted than her late father. She’s been driving herself
relentlessly since his death, in spite of the constrictive budgets our donors have imposed on us. For some…
fiend to try to tickle her to death… why, it’s monstrous! I don’t suppose there’s much left of the device’s
insides for me to examine, after your heroic effort on behalf of my niece.”
Steed extracted his sword cane from the now heavily sparking and smoking box, and replaced it into his umbrella. As he stroked his upper lip with the curved wooden handle, his gaze moved
from the disabled box to one of the robots totteringly click-clacking on high heels just behind.
“Our robots, Mr. Steed, tirelessly aid our research into the engineering of safe, sane
women’s footwear,” Steptoe said, with obvious pride. “Do you suppose the tickle attack on Stephanie
is an attempt to cripple our steps toward success? Despite her youth, she is a world authority on the func-
tion and sensitivity of the female foot. All the technology harnessed by my late brother and I—advanced
computers, these robots, and the prototype footwear—is complemented by her essential expertise.”
“Her departing remark about ‘tickle trauma’ was curious,” offered Steed. “Does her
expertise—and your research—extend to female foot ticklishness?” Steptoe seemed to hesitate a beat,
but before he could answer.
“Mr. Steed?” It was the strawberry-waved receptionist with the sweet voice and the
long legs and the short dress and the high boots . . . “There’s a call for you.”
He moved briskly and, taking the phone with a smiling “Thank you” for the giver,
soberly answered, “Steed here. … Yes, Mother. … Oh, really? … I understand that’s fewer than forty-
eight hours away. … Of course ... I AGREE it’s a ticklish matter. … Good-bye.”
Steed handed the phone back to the full-breasted receptionist etc., etc. with a smile and
turned to Steptoe with pursed lips.
“There’s a complication, Professor. Within two days, THE SHOE SHOW BY THE
SEASHORE will commence in Brighton. It will feature female shoe designers from all over the globe.
Even with the heightened security the Ministry can provide, the concern is that our quarry may target
visiting designers next, sparking an international furor.”
“We normally would have had a booth, Steed, at THE SHOE SHORE BY THE SHE … THE SHORE SHOE BY THE SHA …THE SEA SHOE BY THE SHOW SHORE … ,” Steptoe fulmin-
ated. “Well, we would have been there, but the Foot Foundation’s cutback on our funding forestalled
that. Still, I want to help you stop this fiend,” he resolutely said, retrieving an overcoat from a nearby rack and fumbling it on. “No more women should suffer being tickled to death.”
Steed, with an eye toward the receptionist endowed as previously noted, “Not without
her consent, of course.”
As he departed with Steptoe, the object- of- his- eye brushed her chin with the blade of a quill, her sly smile indicating she was seriously considering his offer.
Part Three
Mrs. Peel’s Lotus Elan went into high gear as she navigated the winding roads of the
English countryside. She had called ahead to Lady Victoria and warned her in no uncertain terms not to
accept delivery of anything marked from the Foot Foundation, especially from a small, dark- and -curly-
headed- and -bearded messenger. She arrived mid-afternoon at the spacious Healey estate, dominated by
its Georgian manor house, set near a small willow-ringed, swan-filled lake, which, she observed with a
raised eyebrow, was shaped in the profile of a lady’s slipper.
The footwear motif continued as Mrs. Peel came to the front door and used the tall, buttoned- shoe knocker to announce her arrival. The smiling maid who led her to a grand room balanced
up admirably on the tallest golden heels Emma had ever seen. A tall, broad-shouldered woman— it
wasn’t often that Emma felt small next to any femme—with long golden hair, streaked silver, framing a strong, high -cheekboned face boasting smooth skin belying her fifty years, Lady Victoria, clad in a
gold-leather pants suit, with golden open-toed slippers upon her golden-hosed feet , grandly welcomed her guest.
She purred, “Mrs. Peel, what an interesting pair of shoes you’re wearing!”
Emma flexed her feet underneath the zippers of her ankle boots, which complemented
her navy-and-yellow single-piece suit. “What they lack in provocation, they make up in…complete
surrender to my active habits.”
“My dear, you don’t have to choose between style and mobility!” the Lady pronounced.
“This is the 21st Century! A woman should be able to flaunt her sensuous feet and walk comfortably at all
times. Running shoes. Sneakers. Construction boots. Clogs. (sigh) One might as well wrap one’s feet in
dirty burlap. Why wouldn’t someone want to encounter the world, wearing these…”
She rose from the divan she’d been reclining on, and opened a mahogany cabinet, revealing several slanted shelves, upon which were displayed over a dozen pair of high-heeled pumps and
sandals. Some seemed made of quartz, others of snakeskin, still others of iridescent silk. They were
bejeweled, sequined, webbed in metallic mesh, and dotted with black pearls. They bore tiny bells, displayed minute LCD’s, glowed with neon piping, and sported holographic insteps.
“These are the shoes of tomorrow for the ladies of today. Unique. Digital. And guaranteed to draw any passing eyes to the wearer’s feet,” Lady Victoria proudly announced as she
stroked a few, as if they were small spoiled mammals.
Another smiling maid, also shod in precipitous pumps, these of silver, knocked, before
wheeling in a high tea service. After she poured, she click-clacked out, her employer’s eyes
again fixed to the moving footwear, Emma noted.
“Well, some of them would certainly be useful navigating the aisles of the cinema
during the feature,” Mrs. Peel observed. “I must say your competitors, ah, those that remain, will be
hard-pressed to top you.”
“Oh, dear, yes,” the Lady intoned mournfully, “my four young friends—we were all on
the board of The Foot Foundation, ah! but, you know—so talented, so dedicated to making visual poetry
of the feet of the modern woman! Am I to believe the reports I’ve received? They were tickled to death?”
Mrs. Peel’s eyes narrowed, before she replied, “Each received a programmed mechanism
lethal to any tenderfoot. The killer has been methodically strolling down the list of board members.” She
elaborated, concluding with, “We believe you may be the next target.”
“Ho-ho, my child! Let ‘em try! It would take a genius of a tickler indeed to get me to
meet the Reaper,” hooted the statuesque blonde. “But, you said ‘programmed mechanisms’?”
“Yes,” replied Emma. “The killer knows cybernetics, biochemistry, and the frail anatomy of the human foot.”
“T.O.E.S!” shouted Lady Victoria, slapping her thigh.
“Well, yes,” Mrs. Peel returned with barely disguised exasperation. “The killer targets
toes.”
“No, no!” the Lady snapped. “ ‘Transform Our English Shoes! T.O.E.S. The research
firm that is a small part of the Foundation. Run by a chap named Steptoe, no less, and his niece. HIS
brother actually ran the place but passed on recently. They’re obsessed with the idea of scientifically
developing the most perfectly comfortable woman’s shoe. Mad as hares, the lot. They’ve been badgering
us lately for more funds for their projects. Very hi-tech. Very expensive. So misguided.” She gestured
proudly at her own creations. “They dismiss these works of great beauty.”
The shoe knocker at the front door resounded through the house. Mrs. Peel could
hear high heels click-clacking to the front door.
Her hostess continued, “Still, those Steptoes are clever with machines and computers,
and they’ll bore you to tears with all they know about women’s feet. ‘Seems as if THEY’RE your prime
suspects.”
Mrs. Peel then revealed Steed’s phone account of the attack on Stephanie Steptoe at
T.O.E.S. Lady Victoria finished a biscuit and drained her teacup before conceding, “I suppose that elimin-
ates them, then, eh?”
There was a knock, and both silver heels and golden heels entered bearing a large box
between them. “Milady, this gentleman has a special delivery from the Foundation.”
Mrs. Peel’s head jerked up from her teacup and her eyes flashed. Entering behind
the pumped-up pair was a small individual wearing dark eyeglasses under a black cap and above a black
jumpsuit. Both Lady Victoria and Mrs. Peel leaped to their feet.
“Dark, curly hair,” stage-whispered Lady Victoria as she moved towards the delivery
person.
“Dark, curly beard,” similarly spoke Mrs. Peel as she circled towards the man from the
other side.
The messenger’s mouth formed a perfect “O” and he turned tail and raced out of the manor. Mrs. Peel bolted after him. Lady Victoria followed, practically thrumming with pleasure as she shouted, “Wait for me, m’dear! I’m going to join in the chase!”
The beard reached the small van with the pink, little bare foot imprinted on each door, slammed within, and roared down the estate road. Emma practically jumped into her Lotus, waited
a long, impatient beat for Lady Victoria to squeeze her Amazon form into the passenger seat, and she
peeled off in pursuit.
“How exciting!” purred Lady Victoria, as Mrs. Peel exploited her roadster’s superior
handling to narrow the gap with her quarry . . .
*******
Steed, in his open canary Rolls, was also speedily on the move, with Martin Steptoe in the passenger seat.
“Oh, dear, I hope we aren’t too late,” moaned the little professor.
“She assured my . . . office that she could keep the device at bay. Her headquarters
is just beyond the bend.” Steed steered the Rolls up a service road, past a sign shaped like a horizontal boot
and bearing the cursive logo FOOTHUGGERS.
Steed pulled the Rolls before the door--along side was a smaller version of the road sign-- of a Victorian manse. The two men hurried within, and Steed’s call for Miss Piedsdeux was answered by
two cries from a room past the reception area. Within were two women, standing atop two chairs set upon a
desk on either side of a telephone. One women, a Rubenesque brunette, perhaps forty, was dressed in a long, brown woolen dress and was barefooted, with tangerine toenails. The other, far younger, barely out
her teens, was pale, thin, and blonde, sweating and shivering noticeably in a baby-blue turtleneck and bluejeans. On one of her smooth small alabaster feet the tiny toes bore red nails, the other blue nails. The
older woman was supporting the younger, who giggled musically occasionally, on the teetering perch.
The brunette shouted as the two men approached them, “Oh, mon Dieu! Help at last!
But look out! They’re looze in here zomevhere!”
Steed’s eyes darted around, the room’s semi-darkness punctuated by small lamps at
several desks. He could hear a skittering under one of the desks. Keeping his eyes pealed, he shouted,
“How many?”
“Two of ze nazty zings! Quick like ze hares. And zay teekal!” the brunette blurted,
shuddering.
“Careful, Steed!” cautioned Steptoe, who seemed about to jump onto a desk himself.
Something flashed beneath another desk, and Steed kicked away a swivel chair to
improve visibility. He heard a scrabbling, and saw a small shape retreating to the shadows. His hand
fell upon an object on one of the desks. It was a three-foot long mannequin leg, rather well “fleshed out,” down to its well-detailed arched foot and scarlet-painted toenails. Steed grabbed it by the lower thigh and
thrust it under the desk, towards the shape.
The shape jumped toward the leg, latching onto the foot. Steed withdrew the leg, and,
without hesitation, whirled and smashed the shape, still clinging to the toes of the leg, against a wall. There was a crunch, an electronic squeal, and a brief sparking. Steed brought the foot back and the shape, a pink, grapefruit-sized sphere with innumerable brush-tipped three-inch tentacles, rolled dead onto a desk.
He swiveled the desk’s lamp to examine the object more closely when the brunette
screamed, “Look out!”
Steptoe yelped and was kicking at something sliding towards him in front of the women’s
vantage point. Steed shouted, “Here, old boy!” and in one motion removed his bowler and hurled it to the
stomping Steptoe. The little man cried, “Oh!” caught it, and dropped suddenly to the floor, trapping the second tickley sphere under the bowler, which he held fast to the floor against the struggling device.
Steed carried a metal strong box from one of the desks, opened it, and dumped out its
contents. Then he knelt by Steptoe and the bowler, whispering, “All right, Professor. Let it go!” Steptoe
yanked up the hat and Steed deftly caught the sphere in the box, closing the lid and locking it.
“Phew!” Steed said. “Give me the old-fashioned boar hunt any old day!”
He and Steptoe received the giggly blonde from the brunette and eased her into a chair.
Steed then gallantly took the hand of the brunette and helped her down. “Oh, zank you!” she exclaimed
with obvious relief. “If you only knew what you saved us from…zose zings…our feet…”
Retrieving the dead sphere and laying it on the desk before them, next to the metal box
holding the captive live one, Steed murmured, “The most insidious device yet… portable…subtle…swift…
a danger to every ticklish spot on the body public. Mass production would mean…mass hysteria!”
Part Four
“Everyone else had gone home for zee day, Mr. Steed,” Madame Piedsdeux related, “when my apprentice Clare and I received zis zmall package from zis driver with zee dark curly hair…”
“…and zee dark curly beard and zee dark clothes who we’ve been zeek …seeking.”
Steed interjected, adding, “Didn’t you get our warning about this individual and the package he would
try to deliver?”
“Mais, oui—yes, but I am a leetle absent-minded, and I did not tell Clare. She received
ze parcel and, being zo young, impulsively opened eet. Ze pamphlet within said that zese zings were “Foot-
huggers,” designed to massage and relax the feet. Well, you know ze name of our firm…”
“So, obviously, does our mysterious villain.” Steed observed. “Sending you a package…”
“…zat we could not rezist opening,” she shuddered. “We followed ze operating instructions—and zay came alive. You know, Mr. Steed, ve are very…footloose here; ve all work in our
bare feet. Zo it was easy for these crawly zings to grab onto our feet and start snaking their feelers between
our toes and along our soles. Oooo, eet was agony!: lol I was about to surrender to laughter, when I managed to dislodge my hugger.
“Clare was not zo lucky. Hers hung on longer, and eet beet her.”
“Bit her?” asked Steptoe.
“Oui. See the little spot of blood on her beeg toe,” pointed out the Frenchwoman.
Steed held up Clare’s right foot, and she shrieked amidst her simmering giggles. There
was a tiny puncture wound on her toe. “This is where some drugs were administered,” he said.
“Iz zat why she is ztill zo happy, even after I managed to beat the leetle beast off her
foot?” asked Madame Piedsdeux.
“Yes,” Steed mused, “although if you hadn’t acted so heroically, this young woman would have soon laughed herself to death, as previous victims have.”
“Sacres chats!”
“Steed, I want to get this device back to the laboratory,” interjected Steptoe. “for
analysis. Maybe I can tell you who made it. Will you take me there?”
“Ladies, if you’ll excuse us,” Steed said, touching the brim of his bowler, “we must
press on.” Then, to himself, he muttered, “I wonder how Mrs. Peel is faring…”
******
After a spirited chase over hill and dale, Mrs. Peel and Lady Victoria were practically riding the bumper of the fleeing van. The van’s incapacity to take a certain sweeping curve tightly
allowed Mrs. Peel to maneuver alongside it and force it off road into a shallow ditch. The slight, hirsute
driver stumbled out and tried to lose his pursuers in a wood. However, the lanky Emma outlegged her
prey and, grabbing his shoulders, spun him around and delivered a stunning karate blow to the neck. His
cap and sunglasses flying away, he staggered into her arms. Grasping his chin to fix his identity, she was
flummoxed to find his copious curly black whiskers coming away in her hand, revealing quite smooth
girlish features. The dark curls above were askew, and she pulled them off to reveal sandy tresses falling
out of a tight bun. Her handhold on the slumping figure’s chest confirmed what was apparent: the delivery
“man” was, in fact, a wisp of a young woman.
Mrs. Peel was pondering this when she felt a hard blow at the base of her skull and crumpled to the leafy ground, unconscious. Above her stood the imperious figure of Lady Victoria, smiling smugly, holding a gold slipper with its heavy heel, and, shaking off the effects of Mrs. Peel’s blow, the grim gamine Stephanie Steptoe.
******
The small van with the bare feet painted on its doors was pulling away from the abandoned Lotus Elan when a phone in Mrs. Peel’s handbag chirped and trilled. Driving in his Rolls
with Prof. Steptoe, who was holding the metal strongbox containing the captured “foothugger” on his
lap, Steed was holding a palm phone to his ear.
“Strange. Mrs. Peel doesn’t answer,” Steed shouted over the roaring engine.
“I wouldn’t worry, Steed,” shouted Steptoe, a shadow seeming to pass over his features.
“I’m sure she’s in very good hands.”
Mrs. Peel awakened through a haze of pain to focus her eyes on a surrounding array of computers, mechanical and chemical apparatus, and a few industrial robots slowly tottering about on high-
heeled shoes. She was quite firmly restrained in a raised examination chair: a leather strap holding her fore-
head firmly to a headrest, plastic cuffs binding her forearms to armrests and her shins to leg rests declining
at 45 degrees. A moment’s testing convinced her that she wasn’t going to force her way free.
“Awake at last, eh?” observed the former little deliveryman, now entering her field of vision as a pert young lady clad in a sleeveless, thigh-length floral-print dress and white clogs.
Mrs. Peel met her brown eyes and chuckled, “For a committed cross-dresser, you do get
around!”
“A necessary masquerade for an avenger, Mrs. Peel,” said the gamine.
“Oh? I rarely go in for it myself,” cracked Emma. “Allow me to indulge in some deduction. You must be Stephanie Steptoe. When Steed called me from the base of your T.O.E.S.,
he neglected to mention your beard. But he did mention your encounter with the Box. A sham, I guess.
Part of your efforts to keep us from concluding that you are responsible for these lethal ticklings.” She
raised her voice theatrically, adding, “Isn’t that correct, Lady Victoria?”
Stepping into her view, the gold-clad, mature Amazon laughed and said, “I must say,
Mrs. Peel, that you’re frightfully bright for someone who allowed herself to be so easily shanghaied.”
“I suspected you were a player, and not a prospective victim, my Lady,” said Emma, with a smirk, “when you let slip that the victims had been tickled to death. The press releases had only stated
that the designers died from heart failure. I was only to happy to have you tail along with me in the hope
that you would reveal your hand. Unfortunately,” she soberly noted, “I was taken aback by Miss Steptoe’s
disguise, and well, … YOU took me ABACK!”
“Ah-ha-ha-ha! You really are unflappable!” the Lady volleyed. “More’s the pity that you
are about to die. Still let me reassure you that in your absence, we’ll, ah, make sure the remaining
Foundation board members exit laughing. And, then …when THE SHOE SHOW BY THE SEASHORE
opens in Brighton on Saturday, Ms. Steptoe here and I will represent the vanguard of ladies’ shoe design
and begin a new age of British hegemony in global footwear fashion. Her technical contributions …”
“My dear father’s legacy,” interjected Stephanie, with a quaver in her voice.
“Yes, my dear,” continued Lady Victoria. “His loving bequest skillfully adapted by you
and combined with my uncanny sense of style will …”
“Let me guess,” Mrs. Peel chimed. “Rule the world?” Lady Victoria chuckled in satisfied
acknowledgement.
“Oh, enough of this talk!” Stephanie cried, growing hysteria glowing in her eyes. “Let’s
finish her off and get back to vindicating my poor father.” She grasped Mrs. Peel’s chin and shined her
madness into Emma’s orbs. “They laughed at my father at the Board meetings of The Foot Foundation.
Then they ruthlessly denied him the funds necessary to finish his work: the realization of the perfect pair of woman’s shoes, comfortable and durable, in which the 21st Century woman could realize her destiny. These
silly, frilly hedonists drove him prematurely to his death, but, thanks to Lady Victoria’s generosity and
understanding, we are removing them and placing my father’s work squarely in the mainstream of the
global marketplace.”
“I think I preferred you with a beard,” Emma mused. “It lent you a taciturn quality.”
“Go ahead, Mrs. Peel. Laugh!” shouted Stephanie. “We’ll see to it that the few remaining
minutes of your life are choked with laughter!”
“Why don’t you see to the necessary device, my dear?” Lady Victoria purred to the intense younger woman, as if to a disturbed child. Stephanie struggled to calm her breathing, and disappeared through a rear doorway.
“She doesn’t know you the way I do, does she?” sang Mrs. Peel with her right eyebrow
arched. “She doesn’t know your true opinion of T.O.E.S. I quote, ‘Mad as hares, the lot.’ And ‘so misguided.’ You’re manipulating that poor, grief-maddened waif.”
Lady Victoria knelt between the chair’s footrests and, peering up at her captive, unzipped Mrs. Peel’s ankle boots. She was rather ceremonially pulling the boots off one-by-one as she
said, “Sometimes it is necessary in business to enlist unlikely partners in pursuit of growth, and to motivate
those partners appropriately.”
“Behind your golden sheen, you are one cold bitch,” observed Emma.
“Ah, but your feet are pleasingly warm,” chuckled the Lady, as she hovered her hands
over Emma’s pink-soled peds as if over an open fire. “The one positive attribute of your utilitarian footwear is that it renders your feet tantalizingly tender, so open to teasing.” She waved her long, gold-polished nails over the naked soles. Mrs. Peel steeled herself admirably, but could not quite contain the
twitching of her toes and her mouth at the light touch. The blonde continued, “Advanced technology in the
service of tickling is all very well, but I prefer a traditional hands-on approach myself.”
And with a sigh-enfolded chuckle and a quite sincere smile, Lady Victoria commenced
to skillfully play her nails and the pads of her fingertips upon Emma’s helpless feet. As her captor stroked
along her toes, slid along her insteps, circled her heels, and cruised the outer edges towards a pirouette upon the rosy balls, Mrs. Peel found her control eroding until giggles escaped her lips. Full-throated laughter soon followed when her tormentor bent back her toes and scratched deftly under and between them.
“Mmm-mmm-oh-mmm-oh-mmnn-no-ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-mmm-mmm-ha-ha-ha-heh!” : lol
“I just knew that behind your prepossession of cool competence, Mrs. Peel, was a tender
soul, so to speak,” the tall tickler teased. “A tender soul betrayed by her tender soles, eh? Tickle, tickle, tickle …”
Through her teary laughter, Mrs. Peel could see Stephanie returning with a wooden-and-
metal box, identical to the one that had tickled Moira Dancer to death, identical down to the silhouette
footprints on the top. She placed it on the floor next to the kneeling Lady, who begrudgingly stopped her
manual tickling and helped her slide the box just below Mrs. Peel’s extended feet.
“You’ll find, Mrs. Peel,” Stephanie coolly expounded, as she pulled a cloth gag tightly across Emma’s mouth, tying the fabric behind the headrest, “that this box, unlike the ‘sham’ box I
endured, includes a dose of the sensitizing drug which will readily turn its programmatic tickling of your
bare feet into a heart-stopping experience.”
“I’m sorry it must be this way, my dear,” Lady Victoria conceded as she aided her
young ally in loosening the leg cuffs and lowering their still giddy victim’s feet onto the footprints,” but
we must make it appear that you had an unfortunate encounter with the fiendish box of a masked murderer,
who fled, leaving us helpless to keep you from laughing your way to the Beyond …”
“Mur-mur-mur-mur-ghu-ruh-ruh-eee!” sounded Mrs. Peel, regaining her faculties
at last and casting her eyes across the room. Her two captors stood and turned to find Steed and Steptoe, the latter still bearing the metal strongbox, which he soon placed on a lab table, entering the room
and approaching the three women.
“I’m delighted to see you as well, Mrs. Peel,” beamed Steed, grasping the trunk of his
umbrella in his left hand, and about to unsheathe the sword within with his right.
“Do not deploy that hidden blade, Mr. Steed,” said an officious voice behind him that might have been Marvin Steptoe’s but for the absence of his usual dithering. The mop-headed professor
was pressing a pistol into the small of Steed’s back, continuing, “Drop the umbrella and, without any
sudden gesture, put your hands upon your head and move smoothly against the wall. Then turn and face
the hilarious execution of your colleague. Proceed, my dear.”
“Y-yes, uncle?” said his now uncertain niece, bending to kneel again at Mrs. Peel’s feet.
“He’s hardly your uncle, Miss Steptoe,” Steed announced. “The handkerchief in his
pocket bears the monogram “HS.” Just when did you intend to reveal to your daughter that you still lived, Professor Harold Steptoe?”
“F-father …?” stammered a stunned Stephanie, standing and reaching out to the man she’d believed dead.
“Your father engineered the timely death of your highly-strung, soft-hearted Uncle
Martin,” continued Steed, hammering at Stephanie, “ his twin, and assumed his identity. The better to
enlist you, his grieving daughter, in the plot hatched between himself and his lover, Lady Victoria. They
hoped both to monopolize the ladies’ fashionable shoe industry and demonstrate to certain international terrorist organizations the efficacy of a number of tickling devices, combining his cybernetic skill with
your researches into ladies’ pedal sensitivity.”
“Me and Vicki?” blurted Steptoe. “How did you …”
“The phone call I took here from my darling Mother, telling me about a news photograph
at the funeral of ‘Harold’ Steptoe, depicting ‘Martin’ Steptoe and Lady Victoria Healey holding hands
in ‘grief,’ leading us to suspect that these erstwhile antagonists on the board of The Foot Foundation had
formed an alliance.” Steed was ever so imperceptibly edging away from the wall.
“You, Father, and Lady Victoria?” whimpered Stephanie, beginning to stagger over to
where her father stood holding the gun distractedly on Steed.
Truly moved, Steptoe met his daughter’s weeping eyes, and uttered, “Stephanie, my lone
regret has been deceiving you …”
“Oh, Harold!” spat Lady Victoria. “The little idiot would only have interfered if we hadn’t focussed her mind on your ‘death.’ She’s useless to us now.”
“Shut up!” screeched Stephanie as she leaped at the golden Lady. Mrs. Peel extended
her foot and tripped up the young brunette, causing her to stumble and step onto the Box, which greedily
accepted her clog-clad feet that happened to land on the footprints. Her white clogs were ejected, leaving
her small, soft white-stocking feet, following a prick on her right big toe, to suffer the merciless tickling
of a multitude of microbrushes. She fell back, bouncing on her buttocks on the floor as she howled with
laughter.
“No-no-no-aieee!-ih-ih-ih-ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-help!-heh-heh-heh-heh-<shriek!>” :lol
Simultaneous to Stephanie’s rapid undoing, Mrs. Peel caught Lady Victoria in a pincer
move with her legs, holding the stunned tall blonde tightly.
Steed, taking advantage of Steptoe’s shock, grasped his bowler and flung it across the room. The hat’s reinforced brim struck hard the little professor’s hand, causing him to drop the pistol, and immediately Steed was upon him. The two grappled briefly across the room, before Steed’s superior size and fighting skill allowed him to disengage Steptoe and send him hurtling into a group of the
teetering robots. The professor with a shout fell amongst them, and their heavy frames collapsed upon him, sending forth a shower of sparks. Steptoe had been mashed.
Meanwhile, to the accompaniment of Stephanie’s increasingly frantic laughter, Lady
Victoria, realizing she couldn’t pry Mrs. Peel’s strong legs open, resorted to savagely tickling her bare
feet. Emma, still woozy from her earlier tickling ordeal, yelped and loosened her hold, which the Lady escaped from. She was scrambling on the floor for Steptoe’s dropped pistol when Steed, hastening to the
metal strongbox Steptoe had left on the lab table, flipped it open and hurled it at the blonde as she closed
her hand on the gun.
The box struck her squarely on the back, bowling her over. She lost her grip on the gun,
and both of her golden slippers, as well. She was just rising to her knees when she felt something entwine
her left foot tightly. It was the pink, plastic tentacled ball, the sight and touch of which caused her to scream
and claw at her golden silk-stocking foot. She felt a sharp pain on one of her toes and soon began to experience a warm flood of light-headedness and giggles bubbling up her throat. She had achieved a weaving standing position when the balls’ flexible feelers began to vibrate along her silken sole and
poke between her very tender toes. She exploded with giggles become full-bore laughter, and haplessly
tried to shake the “foothugger” off.
By now, Steed had released Mrs. Peel from her bondage, and the two were trying to
aid Stephanie, whose teary, red face was contorted with her screams of laughter and desperate gasps for
air. As the box applied her own program of an almost unlimited variety of minute brushing upon her immobilized nyloned soles, she danced on her buns helplessly. : lol Steed had recovered his umbrella,
and was trying to duplicate his previous breaching of the box’s defenses. Mrs. Peel was futilely pulling
the trapped brunette’s legs.
Finally, just when Stephanie’s laughter reached a point of gurgling silence, Steed
succeeded in penetrating the box and damaging its works. As it sparked and smoked, its hold on Stephanie
loosened, and Mrs. Peel was able to pull her giggling form free. Steed and Emma hovered over the prone
form of the girl until they were assured that she was breathing freely and was merely sliding into a merciful unconsciousness . . .
Only then did the Avengers turn and witness Lady Victoria, her large, sleek gilded
form contorted with hysterical laughter : lol, fall against a large picture window of the laboratory. Before
they could reach her, she crashed through the glass and, still clutching at the relentless device wiggling
its tickley tentacles across her hypersensitive sole, tumbled to the unyielding parking lot below.
Peering down at her unmoving form, Steed and Mrs. Peel exchanged a glance. She shook
her head and observed, “ So much laughter, and all at the drop of a hat,” as Steed winced.
Coda
On a private, relatively uncrowded sunny beach at Brighton, Steed, looking quite fit in
his flattering Pierre Cardin swimming trunks, was just finishing burying Mrs. Peel-- only her head
and wiggling bare feet uncovered-- in the sand.
“There,” he announced, “the construction project has been completed.”
“I must say,” Emma said, straining slightly, “I-huhrumph-can’t budge under these
countless grains. What shall we do about lunch?”
“Fret not, dear lady,” he orated, as he reached for a large straw basket behind her head.
“You shall not go without nourishment as you serve the cause of beach architecture.”
Pulling off a cloth atop the basket and laying it with a snap on the sand next to Mrs.
Peel’s head as she lay, contemplating the azure sky, Steed begin inventorying the contents, placing each
item on the cloth. “Hearty Midlands Stilton, smoked Scottish salmon, cold Highlands pheasant, crusty,
whole-grain Welsh bread, assorted pickles and condiments, all complimented by, I must say, as I per-
sonally selected it, an especially vintage Champagne. Here are two glasses, and, oh, my …”
“What? Wait, don’t tell me!” Mrs. Peel exclaimed, her head turned so her nose was
twitching mere inches from the plate of salmon. “You forgot utensils!”
“Sadly, yes,” he admitted. “At least if we had a knife, anything with a useful blade—
Wait! I think there’s something at the bottom of our basket with a good blade!”
He reached into the basket and extracted a large goose quill, which he brandished
in front of Emma’s eyes, which filled with delayed, alarmed recognition.
“Now, Steed…” she intoned, nervously.
“You know, you may be right, Mrs. Peel,” he happily conceded. “This blade won’t
be of much use at this end.” He paused momentously before getting to his feet and proceeding to the
sea end of the sandpile. “However, it will prove very handy down here.”
“Steed, what about lunch?” Mrs. Peel cried, desperately craning her neck.
“Of course, Mrs. Peel,” Steed sang, as he sat at her flailing bare feet. “How about an
appetizer?” And he began sawing the quill between her uncharacteristically helpless toes …: lol
In my dreams, the following credits (with selections made from across time) for this episode roll, as Laurie Johnson’s jaunty AVENGERS theme sees us home:
JOANNA LUMLEY (circa 1992) as Lady Victoria Healey
(I couldn’t resist pitting Diana Rigg’s Mrs. Peel against one of Steed’s
absolutely fabulous later partners.)
PATRICK TROUGHTON (circa 1968) as Professor Steptoe
(I borrowed the late 2nd Doctor Who’s knack for playing comic and villainous
characters.)
HELENA BONHAM CARTER (circa 1987) as Stephanie Steptoe
(petite but powerful)
MOIRA SHEARER (circa 1960) as Moira Dancer
(This is an homage to Ms. Shearer’s shocking fate in Michael Powell’s
PEEPING TOM.)
JOAN GREENWOOD (circa 1951) as Grace Walker
(Ms. Greenwood, the actress with the sexiest voice in British cinema, would
have played Lady V., but for her diminutive stature.)
BETTE MIDLER (today) as Claudette Piedsdeux
(Like I need an excuse to cast the divine one.)
TWIGGY (circa 1967) as Clare
(I wanted one icon of the Mod period.)
MICHAEL CRAWFORD (circa 1965) as Noel
(Yeah, I know this is an insultingly small part for The Phantom, but I wanted
to get his goofy 60’s persona, as seen in THE KNACK, in somewhere.)
LINDA THORSON (circa 1969) as the leggy secretary
(It’s about time we all forgave Ms. Thorson for not being Diana Rigg.)
I would like this scenario directed by ROBERT FUEST, who helmed some darkly
amusing AVENGERS episodes and gave us the ghastly slapstick of Dr. Phibes.
Written by TEE HEE LAWRENCE (who is no Brian Clemens)
Patrick Macnee’s feather provided by THE TICKLING MEDIA FORUM.
In my mid-teens, I was in love with Emma Peel.
t: Wow!! This read just like an actual episode! They should've done this one. Really excellently written, I absolutely love the Avengers, and it's funny, I automatically imagined Miss AbFab as Lady V, so I was thoroughly amused when I saw that that's just what you had in mind. And of course, no one need ever find an excuse for casting the Divine Miss M... Man, I wish they could make this episode a reality. To quote Cher, "If I could turn back ti-ime..." Mwah!
