Little People by Tom Holt

Martin Amis novel.
    The results, when I came to examine them the next morning by the feeble light of the little pen-sized torch that had fortuitously tumbled out of a cracker the day before, weren’t nearly as encouraging as I’d hoped. One saucer of stale beer had become a sort of Agincourt for snails, and there was no indication that the biscuit and chocolate had been touched. As I approached the next saucer a very fat-looking pigeon tried to do an emergency lift-off, stalled about a foot from the ground and just about pulled off a forced landing in the leek patch. I don’t know if pigeons can be prosecuted for drunk flying; if so, I hope it had the sense to hunker down and sleep it off, though I doubt it. If it was bright enough to do that, it wouldn’t be a pigeon. My guess is that a badger got at the third saucer; that, or it was the victim of a very small-scale drive-by Greek wedding. In any event, the saucer was too badly smashed and the shards too widely distributed to give me any useful data about whether and by what its contents had been molested. That just left one more saucer, in the same part of the garden where I’d seen Elf One all those years ago, and sure enough all the beer had gone, along with nearly all the chocolate and two-thirds of the biscuit; also, there was a small puddle of yellowy-brown stuff that didn’t smell nice at all and could conceivably have been elven vomit – but I couldn’t confirm that, of course, since I had no samples of definitely genuine elf-puke to compare it with. What there weren’t were any tracks, footprints, discarded artefacts or other clear evidence. A definite maybe, in other words.
    Never mind. I gathered up the three surviving saucers, replaced them with the next instalment, and got back inside before sunrise had a chance to grass me up to the household. The day dragged by in the same tiresome pattern of obligation and evasion, and once again I set the alarm before going to sleep. By the end of the week, I didn’t need it; I’d mutated, God help me, into an early-to-bed early riser, which only goes to show the sacrifices we scientists are prepared to make for the sake of our research.
    But a pattern was starting to emerge. The only saucer to get any sort of result was Number Four in the lettuce zone. No more alleged elf-puke, and still no tracks or other visible signs, but something was scoffing the bickies and glugging the beer in a highly thorough, not to mention dedicated fashion; certainly enough to justify proceeding to Phase Three.
    Assuming I was prepared to take the risk, of course. Putting down saucers of flat beer could just about be explained away as a science project or a sudden burst of compassion for asylum-seeking hedgehogs or something of the sort, though I suspect that if I’d been called upon to explain myself to Daddy George an explanation along those lines would’ve come across as unconvincing bordering on the Clintonesque. A camera, on the other hand, cunningly rigged with tripwires to set itself off as soon as anything jostled the saucer, was in another league altogether. Besides, quite apart from the security aspect, I couldn’t make up my mind whether I was prepared to change the nature of my relationship with the putative elf –
    I know, that does sound nauseatingly flaky. But look at it this way. Up to that point, all I’d done was give away free beer and calories, out of (for all the elf knew) the kindness of my heart. If the little buggers were capable of goodwill, I was due for some; likewise trust and all that stuff. If I was then to start loosing off flashguns under their noses like some ruthless paparazzo, we’d be straight back to square one, possibly even worse.
    Furthermore, it wasn’t just a matter of cold policy: I was starting to feel attached to the little tyke.
    God only knew how or why; looked at logically, on the evidence I had gathered, my elf was the kind of