This is an expansion of a posting I put in the Golden Age of Detection Yahoo Group. The impetus for it is the proliferation of Political Correctness and Angst-ridden protagonists, including the detectives, in modern mystery fiction. Chapter headings and large portions of text are omitted, because I couldn't be bothered to write them. -- Grobius(posted on GAD, July 2003)
In these haunted days of the twilight of our Age, there occasionally comes a morning when the sky is bright, the temperature is cool, and one feels right with the world. This is what Alistair Lightfoot, Professor Emeritus of Haverford University, mused whilst he lighted up his first forbidden cigarette of the day, strolling through the spring greenery of Kensington Gardens. There were very few people about at this gorgeous early morning hour, save for a few groundskeepers trundling their wheel-barrows, hard at work on a thankless and unrewarding job. Lightfoot was on his way to meet up with his old friend Gideon Fell, who was scheduled for his morning, medico-prescribed exercise of three perambulations of the Round Pond. What he was not aware of yet was the scene that had just taken place in Dr Fell's dining room. ...
*************
"Gideon, this is your third kipper," said Mrs Fell with pursed lips and hands clenched against her lean hips.
Scowling, he replied, "Archons of Athens, woman, I have been accustomed to having at least four kippers for breakfast every day of my life and see no reason to forego them."
"You know what Doctor Tairlaine said. There is far too much salt in them, and it is bad for your blood pressure."
"Harrumph! Mere quackery," he said, grudgingly pushing his plate aside. "Where is my pipe?"
"I have hidden it! You are not to smoke until after supper. Nor drink, for that matter. You will never finish your book about English drinking habits over the ages at the rate you continue to swill beer. And you are constantly distracted by mysteries. You retired twenty years ago and should not carry on this way."
"Ah, well," he sighed, as he stood up to prepare for his morning expedition. ...
*************
As Lightfoot continued into the park, he reflected on past occasions when he had been involved in Dr Fell's adventures -- the Fishbourne Fishbowl murders, the affair of the Raving Jackal, even his own near encounter with the hangman in that episode of the Meritless Emeritus. And, ah, the bewitching ginch Melissa -- 'love me, you devil, or leave me', and prideful fool that he was had damned himself to this private hell these past thirty years by saying 'no, it's impossible, I have teaching commitments'. Still, those were the wonderful days of his middle age, the glorious England that existed before decimalization of the pound and its consequent triple-digit inflation. How did one calculate percentages with pounds, shillings, and pence? How soon one forgets! But what was that behind those bushes? Under that pile of dead leaves. A shoe? How odd, and there seems to be a foot still in it. ...
*************
When Fell finally arrived, wheezing and huffing, with his two canes (both of which now had four aluminium rubber-tipped prongs at the bottom), an area of shrubbery just south of the Round Pond was taped off by scene-of-the-crime police. He pushed his thick trifocal glasses farther up his nose; the old pince-nez on a ribbon had vanished with his visual acuity. There was Inspector Hadley, who had actually been up for retirement in 1955, but was still going strong in spite of his refusal to use e-mail or carry a beeper phone. Younger, more upwardly mobile members of the force had persisted in attempting to oust him, in many cases now far outranked him, yet with his friend Dr Fell he had managed over the years to become indispensable to the Metropolitan Police Department of Peculiar Perpetrations (Queer Complaints had been eliminated as an approved title by an A.C., later to be diplomatically put out to pasture, who jokingly said 'This is not an AIDS treatment center').
"Fell!" bellowed Hadley, glaring out of his boiled and speckled eyes. "You always turn up at the worst times, with your nose for jiggery-pokery. But this is a straightforward case for once, nothing odd about it."
"Hullo, Inspector. Am I just wool-gathering, or have I observed that the body of the victim over there has a toy boat stuffed down his throat?" ...
*************
[Several chapters eliminated, but needless to say Sir Henry Merrivale gets involved, since the victim was once a member not only of British Intelligence but of his Club.]
*************
"Henry, you cannot refuse to become involved in the case," shouted Superintendent Masters, glaring at him with his boiled and speckled eyes. "My career is on the line. I am far too old to go back to walking the beat."
"What beat, you old so-and-so? It means a comfy seat cushion in a chauffeur-driven car these days. Anyway, I got problems. They're persecuting me, the b-------s."
"I thought you were happy they didn't put you into the House of Lords."
"Old Bongo Blair eliminated the hereditary peers in the Lords, the ingrate, and I'm his uncle's godfather, by Jove! No, I didn't want to be shoved into the House, but now that I can't be, dammit, I'm burned by the pure cussedness of it all. But, no, that's not my problem.
"Trouble is my blankety-blank daughters. One of 'em's in a Turkish gaol for drug-running, the other is on her fourth husband, and how am I supposed to take care of that by-blow son of hers she got between husbands, half-Arab he is too? And my secretary Lollipop has filed a sexual discrimination suit against me. Burn me, what on earth reason does the wench have to justify that ingratitude? I am the mildest man on earth." ...
*************
[I omit the section where Lightfoot encounters his Melissa, now a governess, wheeling her charges in the park, and who of course becomes the prime suspect. But part of the denouement is too good to pass up.]
*************
"I suspected the park keeper, Bencolin, when I saw the dead leaves over the body," Dr Fell rumbled. [Author's note: see page 32] "Who else but a garden maintenance worker would have had a sackful of leaf clippings in which to convey the body to its resting place? With the park in its spring greenery [Author's note: see page 2] where could these dead leaves have come from?"
Even H.M. was impressed. "I missed that, but of course I knew it was Bencolin all the time, since my friend Jeff Marle wired me that Bencolin had always wanted to be a merchant seaman, not a Juge d'Instruction. In his cracked mind, since his enforced retirement, he killed his old Resistance colleague by choking him with a toy boat -- revenge for imagined slights."
"Well," said Professor Lightfoot, "I'm glad that's settled, though it's a pity such a fine mind as Bencolin once was should end up drowned in the Round Pond. Now, if this wench will listen to me for once. Melissa, marry me and move to Torquay, or I'll wallop your behind."
"Don't you dare, you old fart! Yes, darling, of course I will marry you." ...
******************
Wyatt James, ©July 2003