Agatha Armitage: Magnifying Glass Emporium

Featuring Hazelnut Pie, an unsubtle companion, and a mercenary hippopotamus.

Dear Friend,

It has been four days and my companion is still with me. She has decided she wants to be a professional sleuth (which is why she is standing over my shoulder with a magnifying glass as I write this… she says she is being “subtle”).

If you’re wondering where she got her magnifying glass, we went to a Magnifying Glass Emporium today. Like all good emporiums, this one had thirteen floors (well, technically it had fourteen floors but one of the floors is a café which serves “The World’s Best Hazelnut Pie”).

The Magnifying Glass Emporium is run by a 10-year-old boy called Lewis who wears ginormous boots to double his height. These are very difficult to walk in — and I know this because he kept falling over.

“Welcome to the Magnifying Glass Emporium,” Lewis announced. “Where subtlety and elegance triumph all.”

Lewis promptly fell backwards into a cabinet full of magnifying glasses and smashed everything. He didn’t realise that he’d smashed everything though. I know this because he kept on talking like nothing had happened. Indeed, my companion did not notice either… she was admiring a magnifying glass in the shape of a ketchup bottle at the time and was far too absorbed to hear the crashing.

[She has just told me that I was hallucinating because it is two testimonies against one. Thus, you should probably ignore everything I just said there. I am sorry for being so misleading].

Lewis showed us around the Emporium. Each floor had dozens of tiny rooms, and there were impressive-looking scanners on each of the doors. To get into each, you had to scan a different body part. I scanned my fingerprints, and my eyes, and my nose, and my shoulders, and my knees, and my toes.

Lewis tells me it is for security. Lewis also tells me it is for money. Apparently, there is a hippopotamus at the London Zoo who pays a high price for these prints (and when I say a ‘high price’, I mean that he gives Lewis lots of free tickets to the Zoo). I tried to tell Lewis that this was a bad idea and probably a mis-use of personal data, but Lewis said I didn’t know what I was talking about.

We stayed at the Emporium for several hours, in which time my companion managed to choose a small selection of magnifying glass (which is to say, she chose seventy-three).

I have much more self control, and only bought seventeen. My favourites are a magnifying glass which doubles as a frying pan, and a magnifying glass in the shape of a rubber duck--

[Oh dear, I’m sorry about the sudden tears to the paper, dear friend… My companion yelled “AHA! THE RUBBER DUCK RETURNS!” when she saw the part about the rubber duck, and whisked this paper out of my hands as evidence. She said she needs it for her case files. She only returned it when she realised I was talking about the magnifying glass variety of duck, and not the killer variety].

Before there are any more misunderstandings, I think I will say goodbye.

Your friend,

Agatha