Jonathan Creek

Subtitles by sexylegs

Mother!

Are you going to let him go ahead with this?

For God's sake!

Taxi!

Department of Cytology, London University.

So we keep the trousers from the opening.

For the shirt, I'm thinking of something in shot silk. Maybe in charcoal.

Or we could go for the sable, if you prefer. Or the ebony.

Ebony's nice. - Ebony could work very well.

I can lift out your masculinity. Shall we go with that, then?

No problem. That's very good.

Morning, Adam.

Managed to get the video pen working?

Yes. Just some minor glitch with the fibre-optics.

OK, Elsa, my angel.

We're all done... - Jack the Ripper?

Oh, yes. Monday night, I'm going to need some sort of frock coat and top hat.

A frock coat for Monday.

What is this Jack the Ripper?

Don't sully her mind with it. The innocence is too beguiling.

Is that a dream ticket, Jonathan? 29 years old and still whiter than white.

I don't mean her laundry. - Makes a change.

She's still physically intact, in every sense.

She's never felt a man's tongue on her epiglottis.

You know that for a fact? - I've done my research.

Born in a conservative region of Austria - known locally as the Chastity Belt -

a delicate Alpine flower for whom sex and alcohol are off-limits.

Maybe if I switched drinks?

That's the closest you'll get to an exchange of fluids.

We've got a lot to get through.

I've gone for a word. Please God it's in there.

Open up the Bard.

Start fanning pages and stop anywhere.

Stab the pen down... - Twirl it, Adam.

Or we can't mix to the pre-record. - Right.

Hold the pen up, spin it round and around...

and... - Coming to playback now.

Hit it. "Stratagem."

Which, in a triumph of extra-sensory acuity, is...

Oh! Aaagh.

Hello? - Hi. Is Jonathan around at all?

I'll see if I can find him. Who's calling? Hang on a second.

These gallstones of yours are going to drag us all down the Swanee.

Get them seen to. - I have a small problem with hospitals.

Satire begins to pall after a while.

"Can't you make them disappear by magic?

"Watch that proctoscope, he's got a rabbit up there."

Every asinine quip known to man.

I didn't tell you who I nearly bumped into earlier.

Remember Marella Carney - the Black Canary? Retired about 15 years ago.

I was in the front row at her final performance.

I hoped that when the guillotine fell, her head would fall into my lap...

It wasn't her I saw, it was her daughter, Charlotte.

Who, if you remember... - That's right. The great lust of your life.

You were walking around like a zombie. - Till it came to grief.

After I got round to asking her out.

We went for a meal - all lovely - taxi back to her place in Kensington.

She asked me in for coffee and I said no. That was the last I saw of her.

Sorry. You lost me towards the end there.

Charlotte Carney - who I desired more than oxygen -

asked me into her flat at one in the morning? There's got to be a catch.

"Have you met my fiancé Crispin? He's got two penises and his own airline."

Or I whisper "I love you" and she attacks me with a fire extinguisher.

I can do without that kind of humiliation.

Your love life would make a fine play by Samuel Beckett.

It's the nihilistic quality it has.

She never called me again afterwards, which only proves my point...

Hello? - Jonathan.

Do you want to pop over this evening? I'll cook something.

No. Why should there be a reason? I'm just...

Look. All right. I need you tonight. Here in my bedroom.

There are certain things I don't like staring at in bed.

Anything less than two inches long... Don't bring it near me! Get rid of it!

It's a cockroach. It's very friendly.

Just have sex with it, you thoroughly revolting person!

Oh, dispose of it, please! Not down the toilet!

Take it to the garden and kill it with a spade.

Kill it with a spade? Am I Jack the Hat McVitie?

Just do it! God Almighty! And don't be such a doily.

That's the third one this week. I don't know where they're coming from.

Yeah. Hello. - Hello? Is that?

Sorry. I'm trying to reach Jonathan Creek.

Yeah. He's popped out for a second. Who's calling?

Charlotte Carney. - OK. Just a sec...

Just one second, Charlotte.

I'll probably go to hell for that - snuffing out a living thing.

Call for you. A Charlotte Carney.

Hello. - Jonathan?

It was you I passed this morning.

Sorry? - You wouldn't have noticed me.

Three years ago. Changed beyond all recognition, probably.

I'm sorry...

This is the worst day of my life.

What happened?

Remember something you said to me once?

There's no such thing as magic. Real magic.

You didn't believe in anything you couldn't touch or see.

This afternoon, at four o'clock...

my mother killed herself.

How she did, I defy anyone to explain.

It's like a kind of madness has taken over and there are no rules anymore about life!

Or death.

Charlotte?

I can't believe we're doing this

after one hysterical phone call from some floozy you met at a party.

There was never even anything between you.

Do you ever get this thing serviced?

How can anyone drive without a windscreen washer?

It's got a windscreen washer. - But it's no use on the back seat!

The guy who was going to fit it did a runner.

A bit of fresh air won't harm you.

So what's the story on her mother?

Marella Carney, the Black Canary. Wasn't she big business?

Most of her tricks relied on the fact she had a twin sister.

Don't be ridiculous. - Who did all the difficult bits.

Marella suffered from claustrophobia, so her sister went into all the cabinets.

Using a double isn't exactly a test of ingenuity.

Two of them? They kept that quiet. - They'd hardly put it in the programme!

"Whilst escaping from a locked trunk,

"Miss Carney will be assisted by her twin, Beryl."

That was before the accident. - What accident?

It's a bit on the grisly side. - What accident?

I don't know if you've got the stomach. - Don't give me that macho protective stuff.

At rehearsal one day, one of their big routines,

her sister Beryl's tied up to a bench with an electric buzz saw coming at her.

The mechanism jammed and she was sawn in half.

Oh, my God! - Lengthways.

Lengthways?! Oh!

Careful! You'll have us off the road.

Sawn in half... What the hell did you have to tell me that for?

With an electric buzz saw? Oh! That's done it for me now.

I'll sleep with a saucepan between my legs.

How far up do you think it went before? - Far enough.

They kept it quiet. Just said Marella was retiring "for personal reasons".

That is the most unutterably horrible story I have ever heard.

Accidents can happen. People don't realise...

What?

What? - I suppose I'd never really...

Assuming it was an accident.

Can we move or they'll have to chip us out.

I'm sorry if I put the wind up you last night. It's just...

I think we're all in need of a cold hard cynical mind right now.

Take us through it.

15 years ago, my mother and her sister Beryl

were running through this new trick with an electric saw.

The blade that was meant to drop away jammed.

Yes! We've got a general picture of what happened.

So you'd have been about 12 at the time?

Fortunately, or not - depending how you look at it - Auntie Beryl had no one close.

She'd parted from her husband ten years before. He'd disappeared from the picture.

Her daughter, my cousin Hannah, had run away from home in her late teens -

as you did in the '70s -

with some keyboard player to Australia to find God in a sugar cube.

She sent back a poem in Aborigine.

The vicar read it at the funeral. It sounded like he was having a seizure.

No one expected to see her this side of the Equator ever again.

Until a couple of weeks ago, quite out of the blue...

this letter arrived.

From Hannah. She's coming to England.

Long-lost niece Hannah?

She say when?

You could understand her being nervous.

My cousin could come back with a grudge against the aunt

who was involved in her mother's death. But... I don't know.

There was something else.

Some kind of deeper unease which just took root and festered.

Then she turned up with this Vietnamese character, Pan Duc Lao.

Most of it seems pretty unreal now. That's what's so wonderful.

She was older now and wiser - this was the story.

During her travels, she'd been converted to the wonders of Eastern mysticism,

which had been largely ignored by the West.

Lao was what they call a "psychic surgeon",

with "powers that went beyond the compass of known medical science."

My father was up for all of that.

Anything to help his angina or crumbling bones.

You have to believe this, Jonathan.

The night before last, I watched it happen in front of me.

He put his fingers inside my father's chest, pulled out some kind of tissue...

and after, it was like he hadn't touched him - not a mark on the skin.

None of us got much sleep that night.

Least of all my mother.

The next morning, they were just leaving.

She said how pleased she was to have helped my father,

but now they had important work to do, so...

I'd hoped that would be an end to the horror...

but it was the beginning.

You work in the magic business too, then, Mr Creek?

Yes, with... - What's that?

With Adam Klaus, yes. - Jerry Bellinitus.

My hearing's not very good. I have to lip-read.

We're sorry... - What?

We were sorry to hear about your wife.

I gather you actually saw it happen.

Nothing wrong with my eyes. They're the one bit of me that still works.

Father and I left the house at about 10.30 yesterday.

I'd got a lecture at 12 and you were meeting someone for lunch.

Yes. When I got back, at about 2.30...

the weather seemed to be easing up finally.

Although, by that time, we'd had a good four or five inches of snow.