Porridge, a set of pink neon lights, a heated argument about xylophones, the words 'clearly there had been a murder', ice, Morris dancers, the taming of three shrews, a portaloo, yesterday's newspaper and Horace the humble hat-maker. You wouldn't necessarily connect these things, but they all came together to create something I will always regard as the strangest case of my long career...
It had been another of those long, hot summers during which the sewers smelled as high as a kite, but there was barely a whiff of work. My telephone hadn't rung for so long that I was beginning to wonder whether the line had been cut, and it was while I was phoning the telephone company to find out, that the dame walked through the door.
What any private detective really wants is a juicy murder to solve, but nine times out of ten what we get is another sordid divorce case. Some sobbing dame would walk through the door and say "I think my husband is having an affair!" and I'd spend the next week hiding in the bushes with a camera. So you'll forgive me if I wasn't expecting much from this particular dame. Boy, was I wrong!
"I think my husband is having an affair!" sobbed the dame. At these words, I stood to attention like a pointer sighting a covey of quail. Clearly, there had been a murder.
I suspected the Morris dancers straight off. Every morning they performed relentlessly outside the shelter. Come rain or shine, wind or wither, they would down tools and block the way, making me late for work every darned morning. Three years they'd been doing this. I knew in the back of my mind that they would be connected to this seedy underworld and, ultimately, murder.
But what were those pink neon lights on the other side of town? I had to get there, and quickly.
I pushed past the dame — Mrs Pardoe from the wool shop — without a word. Given the gravity of the situation, I was sure she would understand that there was no time for niceties.
I hailed a cab to the other side of town, telling the driver to head straight for the pink lights. The driver grumbled something about Philip K. Dick, but 8 miles and £28.50 later he got us there. I told the guy I'd pay him when I got my cheque from Mrs P, and jumped out when he stopped at the lights. There they were — in hot, neon pink that seared into the retina — the words:
UN LE SAL'S P ZZA IA
What could it mean? Either some of the letters were missing, or it was some kind of code. Whichever it was, I had to find out, so I dived into the building. It was some kind of restaurant. A fat man in a chef's hat was shovelling dough into a clay oven.
"Ciao buddy, I'm Uncle Sal. Wanna pizza?" he said.
"Enough with the wise cracks," I snarled. "This is a murder investigation! Now, tell me — the key to deciphering the code - what is it?"
"Eh?" said Uncle Sal, if that really was his name. There was something suspicious about this guy, so I decided to get a photo for my case file. But lady luck had it in for me tonight — the second I pressed the button, two people blundered straight into the frame. It was Mr Pardoe and that young woman from the perfume counter at Lacy's Department Store. They were kissing — and they'd ruined my photo! If I never solved this case — it'd be their fault!
I spent the night at home in the air raid shelter. I couldn't sleep. Images of those pink neon lights at that coded pizza place kept flashing through my brain amongst snapshots of Morris dancers. I decided to do me a bowl of porridge, which, if I recall correctly from my school days, was invented by a young lady from Norwich.
Hang on! That was it! Tomorrow, to avoid being late for work at the shelter, I would simply start work early, and go out to pick up my newspaper DURING MY SHIFT! That way I could prevent myself ever being late again!
Curious, I sloped off for another quick glance at the letters on the front of the restaurant. I was convin ed that they held the clue to the murder that I had envisaged had happened. On the way back, I noticed a brand spanking new portaloo. To say I didn't trust it would be the understatement of the minute. It had legs for a start...
I snuck up to the portaloo and took a peek inside. If it wasn't my arch-nemesis Lucie Drang! She screamed an ear-piercing shriek. The police were here in no time, obviously having worked out the same unlawfulness as I had.
"You're under arrest, pervert!" they said to me, presumably to make it convincing in front of Drang. They never said a word to me in the police car, but they bundled me into a cell. I was excited that they were recreating Drang's arrest using me as the main actor. After three days, I suggested that perhaps I was no longer required...
The officer in charge paid no heed to my words, and instead I was lumbered with a cell-mate in the form of Terry Twirling, the local high school music teacher.
“What are you in for?” I asked.
“Thumped a bloke, didn't I?” said Terry. “Maths teacher. Said xylophones were made of metal! I said that's glockenspiels you're thinking of. Xylophones are made of wood. Bloody idiot!”
“But you've got to admit, on an onomatopoeic level, glockenspiels do sound as though they're made of wood, whereas xylophones…”
“Are you calling me a liar?” said Terry, squaring up. I noticed that his knuckles, though bloodied, were tattooed with the words "HATE" and "BACH". Desperately I began pounding the bars of the cell in order to get the attention of the guard. It sounded a bit like a glockenspiel.
Terry shot me a disapproving look.
"That's Toccata And Fugue In D Minor," he said, in a low, terribly menacing voice. I had to say, they were taking this reconstruction to OBSCENE lengths.
"AAAGHHH!!!" yelled one of the guards.
"You wot?" said Terry.
"AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!" said the guard again.
And a few seconds later, "OUCH!!!!"
I decided to intervene.
"Excuse me guard," I said, "but that sounded very much to me like you'd been bitten by a shrew. Am I right, or am I right?" — I thought I'd better play along with the whole façade, as we couldn't waste TOO much time before we were to arrest Lucie Drang.
"Wrong," replied the guard, "THREE SHREWS."
"Tree shrews?" I said. "But they're normally so docile!"
"THREE shrews, you numpty!", snarled Terry, and just like that, he head-butted the cell door open. We each grabbed a chair and within a few minutes had all three shrews under control.
"We make quite a team," I said. "Have you ever considered becoming a detective's assistant?"
"Naff off," said Terry, and grabbing the half-empty can of warm Stella that had been confiscated when he was thrown into the cells, he staggered outside.
"You've forgotten your newspaper," I said, picking up the copy of the local rag that had been sitting under the can. I glanced at the cover. There, encircled by a ring of lager, was the face of Uncle Sal!
"BUY ONE PIZZA, GET ONE FREE", it said on the chef's hat he was wearing in the photo. Of course, that was it - how could I have missed it?
I perused the newspaper with intent. I couldn't help noticing it had yesterday's date on it, the 29st of June. Something seemed a little odd here. I was just on the verge of solving the mystery when the guard arrived.
"You're free to leave" he said.
"Oh that's sick, man!" I said, momentarily forgetting that I wasn't twelve years old, "but why?"
"You tamed three shrews for me," he replied, "so I had words with the powers that be"
"The powers that be what?" I asked.
"The powers that be....I dunno....above?"
"Above what?" - I was intrigued.
"Above...the law?"
"Like who?" - I was going to beat this confession out of him if it was the last thing I did.
"You're f...free to go...." he repeated, less sure of himself now.
"Like WHO?" I said again.
I was distracted for a moment, as I caught another glance at the newspaper. The headline read: "In ompetent thieves aught by se urity ameras."
The missing letter C! Where had I seen it before? I grabbed my notepad and scanned back rigorously. There in my own handwriting was the word "convin ed"!
All this time searching and the answer had been staring me in the face every time I looked in the mirror! I turned myself in and admitted the murder of whoever it was who'd been murdered, but I'd written "clearly there had been a murder" in my notepad, so obviously I must have murdered SOMEONE.
I felt sick to the stomach but I knew that the story wasn't over yet, as I'd also written 'ice' down as one of the things to tie the story together, as well as the hat man. What was THAT all about?
No!! Hold on!! I COULDN'T have been the murderer, otherwise how could I have seen the picture of Uncle Sal and the BUY ONE GET ONE FREE deal?!!!
I told the guard that I had now worked out that I couldn't possibly have murdered the victim, whoever that was. He said "Yes ok, I'll let you out" and we shook hands and had a good laugh about it on the way out. Now it was time to solve it once and for all.
As I shuffled back to the air raid shelter, I passed the shop of Horace, the humble hat-maker, and remembered that I had ordered a new fedora. You can't be a private detective without a fedora.
When I got there, Horace was distraught. Three of the shrews he'd been keeping as pets had escaped. He showed me the cage they'd escaped from. There, on the floor of the cage was the same newspaper I'd found in the Police Station! How could it be in two places at once?
Either something very weird was going on, or someone had made a duplicate of that newspaper. But why?
I decided to conduct a little experiment. I would cryogenically freeze everything for a while. Well, maybe not cryogenically, but I knew there was some ice in the freezer. I looked around Horace's place for a bucket, filling it with the frosty cube thingies. I snuck up behind Horace and poured the ice over his head, aiming at an angle so that it would cover some of the newspaper too. Horace shrieked loudly. But wait, where had I heard that ear piercing squeal before?
That question would have to wait, but I HAD managed to answer my OTHER question about the duplicate newspaper, and it was my experiment that solved it...
I wrote down my findings as quickly as I could, on the only paper I could find — the back of the Polaroid I'd taken, or tried to take - of Uncle Sal. With this in one hand and my brand new fedora in the other, I rushed out into the street. There was no question of going back to the shelter now — that restaurant was at the heart of whatever was going on, and I had to get back there, fast.
I hailed a cab, and as luck would have it, the first one to pass was the same one I'd taken the last time I went there.
"Take me to the pink lights!" I said, but to my surprise, the driver leapt out of the cab and socked me in the nose, muttering something about "lousy fare dodgers" and "Philip K. Dick nuts". The last thing I remember before everything went black was the driver taking my brand new fedora as collateral for the cab fare.
The next thing I remember was waking up on the sidewalk with a dame bending over me. It was Mrs Pardoe from the wool shop, and she was clutching the Polaroid.
"You did it!", she said.
"Did what?"
"Caught my husband with his fancy-woman," said Mrs Pardoe, dangling the Polaroid. "You know, I'm actually surprised, I had come to the conclusion you were an idiot."
"Wait," I said. "You can't have that, it's got my theory about the newspapers on the back of it!" But she was already getting into the back of the cab. As I staggered to my feet, it roared off up the road.
The next morning I turned on the television. Clearly there had been a murder. I saw the police on the news arresting Lucie Drang. I slurped on my coffee with satisfaction. I knew it was her, because that paper, the one at Horace's house, it was wet, so it couldn't have been the same one as the pizza place. It all made sense now, the missing "c", well that was obviously just a cleverly positioned clue by Uncle Sal, right near the portaloo, and was meant to be read as "see?".
That was all it took. I bristled with pride at such an impressive resolution to the case, and now I was free to do as I wished. And what I wished was that in the next case...I would have a sidekick.
But who would it be? Terry Twirling, the mild mannered music teacher? Horace, the humble hat-maker? Uncle Sal, the perplexing pizza chef? Or someone else entirely? One thing was certain —whoever it was, it would be the strangest case of my long career...
FIN
