2.10: The Barman’s grandson’s embarrassing past is brought to light

Even as the Minkey looks for clues in the Swan Hotel, there is another, shocking, letter in the newspaper.

Sir,

Here is photographic evidence that the sleepy, crooked Barman is not fit to run the Swan Hotel. See his very grandson in this debauched display of drunkenness on pub premises just ten years ago!

Lock him up! Make the Swan Hotel Great Again! Drain the pond! Free beer for all (to be paid for by the common frogs in that rival pub to the south of ours)!

Honest Herbert, very stable reader!

Alcock and his colleagues try to draw reassurance from the fact that ‘Honest Herbert’ is obviously deranged. 

It is true that as a young teenager, the Barman’s grandson had gone a bit off the rails, but why bring that up now? (He is well on his way to graduating as a chartered soil infiltration inspector working at a fairly reputable second tier loss adjustment firm.) And what pub could run by giving away free beer or expect another pub, ‘to the south’, to pay for it? 

On the other hand, the newspaper has again published unpleasantness, no doubt because it sells copies. 

Alcock decides to pay its office a visit the next day. Whoever Herbert is, he must be stopped before an unjustified wave of public madness takes the Barman’s drinks licence away. For one thing, that might mean all the pub’s regulars coming to live permanently in the Potting Shed. Alcock feels a shudder run down his spine.