HOLY DISORDERS:
LILY CHRISTINE III 

Fen’s small, vociferous and battered sports car was named Lily Christine III. She made her first appearance in Moving Toyshop, with Fen making a valiant, though scarcely successful, attempt to drive her safely through the streets of Oxford. He bought her from an impoverished, sent-down undergraduate who had already christened her and fastened a steatopygic chromium nude to her radiator cap. His understanding of the car’s works never amounted to much, in all the years he had her. She was prone to breakdowns and mysterious backfiring, and his solution was to lift the bonnet and judiciously apply a hammer within. Naturally, this worked almost unfailingly. Sir Charles Shorthouse offered to buy Lily Christine at the end of the Swan Song affair but Fen clearly refused, as she was still with him some years later, during the Frequent Hearses case.

Though extremely critical of Humbleby’s driving, Fen himself, even after several years in possession of Lily Christine III, remained a liability to man and machine when behind the steering wheel.