The Case of the Horrible Noise

The pink robe was far too short for bending down in. Fortunately, he never missed.

The seventh cleaver was already in the air when the telephone rang. It (the knife) went wide, glanced off a milk bottle, and embedded itself in a loaf of bread. Fortunately, he corrected himself, he never missed unless he was distracted.

"Flora!" he shouted, "can you take that? I'm cooking."

The ringing stopped. The sausage was fairly thick, and six slices would make a respectable sandwich. Not that one worries about respectability when eating so manly a garlic sausage.

He had hoisted himself up onto the counter and was just digging in when

Flora, the housekeeper, came in the door.

"Mmmnph. Mnhh mwhhnh?" He mimed a telephone receiver between bites and got butter in his ear.

"That was Scotland Yard. They seem to want a bit of help with one of their cases again. I told him, the Inspector, to come right over, so you'd best be getting dressed."

"Mnkhy." He slipped primly down from the table and wandered vaguely up the stairs.

Twenty-three minutes later he was sitting in the study, wearing his best pink suit. There was a knock at the door and Flora showed in a rather green-looking man, middle aged, average height, typical detective-inspector sort but unusually good at billiards and, perhaps, overly fond of seedcake. She stayed to dust the clock.

"Mr. Pudding?" asked the detective, a trifle uncertainly.

"Windsor." said the detective. "Flaming Fish." a trifle less relevantly. "Windsor Flaming Fish Pudding. At your service."

"Ah." said the detective, a trifle less confusedly. "Detective Inspector Invective Defector." He held out his hand. It shook.

They shook.

"Sit down, do sit down. What can we do to help you?" said the detective.

"Er, well..." hesitated the detective, hesitantly, "that is to say...."

"You have a problem."

"Yes! Exactly! A problem. How did you guess?"

"I never guess. Often I conjecture, sometimes I say things at random. But I am very good at what I do, Inspector Defector, and one of the things I do is never guess. I'm very good at it."

"Ah, good."

"Now, what exactly is the problem?"

The detective looked pale, a slight improvement over the more fluorescent shades of bile with which he had been earlier experimenting.

"Ghastly, ghastly business." He shook his head. "There's been a death."

"Ah. A murder, I suspect."

"There is some suspicion, yes. How did you guess?"

"I never guess. It happens that the probability that a death being discussed by two eminent detectives such as ourselves involves foul play is nearly four times as great as one being discussed by, let us say, two physicians. Perhaps more."

"Brilliant! Trite, but utterly brilliant. Also completely uninformative. But to business.

"Sir Reginald Smith-Smythe ..."

"Of the Pilsbury Smith-Smythes?"

"Exactly. ... had three or four children. Now, it seems, he has only two or three. Tritium, his unstable youngest son, has died in the most horrible, gruesome, noisy fashion imaginable."

"A piano fell on his head."

"Yes, exactly. We are all, all of us, at the Yard, we are all terribly shocked. Some of us were quite taken aback. Most of us fainted."

"And so you want me to take over the investigation."

"You are noted for the strength of your stomach, while we are a bunch of lily-livered and, frankly, inept twits. I can smell the garlic from here."

"It is rather good. Would you care for some?"

"No, thank you, I'm afraid of sausage. Plus, I always get it stuck up my nose."

"But tell me, why does this particular case cause you all such great distress?"

"The grotesque musical aspects of the whole sordid business, I'm afraid; we're rather fond of Gilbert and Sullivan, down at the Yard, and the idea of someone dying from having a piano fall on his head, well, it frankly incapacitates us."

Pudding sucked on his bull's-eye. "So. Young Tritium Smith-Smythe has died of piano wounds and is now, therefore, dead. The rest of the family, and in all probability, three or four other suspect characters, are now at the family home in varying states of distress. It's at times like this that I often take the next train to the estate, there to be met at the station by a young man who later becomes a suspect."

"That does sound like just the sort of thing a detective would probably want to do, yes."

"If there's anything else you should tell me, you probably won't right now, am I right?"

"Yes; I'd wait until you get to the estate before acquiring any more information. Avoids prejudice, you know."

"Well, we'd, that is to say, I'd be glad to help. There's a discreet donation box by the door as you go out. Be seeing you, Inspector."

"Alright, good-bye. And if there's anything we can do to help, I'll probably be nosing around making a nuisance of myself later on, once I've recovered a bit from the shock of it all."

The detective left, already looking brighter, knowing that the great Pudding was on the case.

"That was nice." said Flora.

Windsor Pudding hated trains, because Flora always insisted on travelling facing forwards; and so, in order to see out the window, he had to sit with his back to the engine, and, it being tomorrow morning, the sun in his lap. They were therefore travelling west from London, which is north of the tropics, and the corridor ran down the north side of their carriage. He whiled away the time with crochet.

The station of Inconsequential Halt was less of a station and more of an inconsequential halt. There was a raised concrete platform with a waiting room and very little else beneath the beeches. Waiting for them on the platform was a young man of perhaps twenty-five years, who did, in fact, look very much like a potential suspect. He introduced himself as Primus Smith-Smythe, the eldest child of Sir Reginald himself. They went out to the car together, where he hastily threw his shirt over a set of piano-tuning tools in the passenger seat.

"Please, do get in. The ride to the manor is not really very long, although they do say that people who try to get back here on foot often become confused in the foggy marshes and wander round until they are mysteriously garrotted by wandering gypsies and found dead in the ditch by the roadside." he said, self-consciously scratching his "death to queers" tattoo.

The ride to the manor was not really very long, although while following the twisting farm track through the foggy marshes they did pass a number of mysteriously gypsy-garrotted hikers. The family home itself was a large and sinisterly imposing building of obsidian and gingerbread, typical of stately homes of the period, except for the bloodstains on the inside of the upper hinge of the back door, which Pudding silently noted as they drove up the drive to the imposing thing. This particular thing, as distinct from other things, was the sort of thing you find on the front of stately homes, around the outside of the main entrance, where it will look most imposing. Flora thought it was just a bit too imposing.

Standing in the thing to greet them was a tall, gaunt, manic-depressive woman with some vegetables.

"Hello, Mother!" called Primus.

"Hello, Son! You are back from the station." she replied.

"Mr. Pudding," said Primus as they got out of the car, "this is my mother, Antonia." "She did it." he added in a whisper. "She killed my darling poof brother."

He had whispered too loudly. Antonia shrieked, "I did it? I did it! I killed his darling poof brother!" and started beating herself on the head with a turnip. "How strange I do not remember it at all. Killing my children is the sort of thing I usually recall for days."

The great Windsor Pudding himself and Flora ran to restrain the poor distressed woman from doing further injury to the presumably innocent vegetable. They took her to the lounge to calm her by putting her head in a bucket of water, and Flora went in search of the maid. By the time the maid came in with tea, Antonia Smith-Smythe's face was quite blue and the whole household had been assembled.

They were a suspicious-looking bunch, as Pudding thought to himself. He repeated their names from his notes, to make sure he had got them right.

"All Right! In Decreasing Order Of Height! You Are:" he bellowed.

"One. Sir Reginald Smith-Smythe." He pointed to the tall, military-looking man on the left, who was idly toying with a piano-hoist. He nodded.

"Two. Primus Smith-Smythe, eldest son of one, above." The young man nodded darkly.

"Three. Pauline Lesbia Anatomy, clandestine lover of Antonia Smith-Smythe (see six, below), posing as a consultant landscaper to the family farm." The tall, elegant ex-model made a little-known Peruvian piano-hurler's gesture of disrespect and had another cup of opium tea.

"Four. Ganges, the gardener." The man was clearly unimportant. Pudding hurried on.

"Five. Dubia Smith-Smythe, eldest daughter, second or third child of Sir Reginald, above." The young lady offered him a slice of almond cake. "Thank you. Don't mind if I do. Where was I? Oh, yes.

"Six. Antonia Smith-Smythe, wife of number one, mother of two, five and the hitherto unnumbered corpse." The tall, gaunt manic-depressive woman looked up as the attention of everyone in the room turned to her. She started trying to kill herself with the celery. She was clearly distraught.

"Seven. Salmonella, the cook. Here for six years, ever since the poisoning of her predecessor in the position, her beautiful and talented younger sister; acquitted on grounds of insanity.

"Eight. Holly, the maid. Excellent tea you make, dear. You really must give me the recipe." He looked around. "Is that everyone?" he asked pointedly, looking at the figure crawling across the room behind the settee. "Is that all?"

The young man looked up from his crawling. "Ah. Who am I?"

"I don't know. Why don't you ask yourself?"

"I already did, somewhat earlier. I'm Illegitimus 1.5 Kumquat. I've lived here since I was half-orphaned."

"Yes, the poor child." said Sir Reginald, "His mother was killed in an unfortunate accident when my darling wife's fingernails became caught in her neck. The doctors tried to replace her windpipe, but all in vain."

"Does your father not recognise you?" asked Pudding, in surprise.

"It's all right," said Sir Reginald, "he's in my will."

"Well, now that you've met everyone," said Dubia, "perhaps it's time for tea. Salmonella? Do you have the specially seasoned cucumber sandwiches all prepared for our guests and loving family?"

The meal was on the whole a sombrely joyful affair, aside from one small and unfortunate incident when Antonia, recovering from a fit of despondency, attempted to kill herself by ramming one of her plastic safety-chopsticks into her brain through the inside edge of her left eyesocket. Pauline ran to her side and, whispering "It's not your fault that Tritium came in first." took her up to her room.

Immediately tea was over, Pudding stood. "All right, perhaps I'd better see the scene of the probable crime." he intoned with some attempt at sepulchrality. Dubia accompanied him up the stairs and down the hallway.

"Have you moved the body?"

"Oh, no, Mr. Pudding;" she said, "He only died two days gone by, and we haven't needed the piano again since then. In fact, I suspect it really needs retuning." They entered the music room.

"I say, it is a little upsetting, isn't it?" gulped Pudding, his face becoming grassy.

"Oh, I don't know. You get used to it." said Dubia gaily, giving the corpse of her dead brother a playful kiss.

"Er, yes. Perhaps if you could leave me alone for now, while I conduct my preliminary examination...?"

"Well, all right. But be sure to examine me, later."

The music room was an ill-used, spartan affair, devoid of furniture except for seven massive velvet-covered overstuffed settees arranged in plush purple rows before the oboe stand, the saxophone rack, the dulcimer carousel, the bagpipe pantry, the guitar collection, the archlute cabinet, the piccolo organiser, the kazoo dispenser, the neat row of marimba-cosies, the clavichord, the clavinet, the clavicymbal, the clavicycle, the claveriser, the clavibaster, the claviprondophone, the pipe organs and the pianoforte at its awkward angle on young Tritium's head. A tricky problem in interior decoration, clumsily solved at best. But one thing was certain: this was no suicide.

In the corner stood a solid gold triangle-stand bearing a very rare complete matched set of seventh century molybdenum bass triangles. On closer examination, each triangle turned out to have an inscription carved deep into its surface in classic Middle Stupid Runic script.

Someone came into the room. Windsor Pudding looked up sharply from his examination of the antique percussion, but it was only Flora.

"Flora, dear!" he called out, "have a look at these!"

She took one of the triangles from its place on the stand.

"Hm." she said. "Good quality metal, better than anything you see around nowadays. Nice triangular shape, pleasing to the eye. That's a good point in a triangle. Made in about A.D. 648, possibly early the next year, by the great trianglesmith Fifflfroth's best student, Plit. Inscription, in Early Middle Stupid Runic Lunatic Formal script: 'hit this thing hard with a chunk of metal; it's a rather flattish F.' At first glance the hand looks almost classic, but if you look closely you'll see that the lewd danglers in fact hang down to the left. These particular triangles seem to have been used as curtain hooks sometime late in the sixteenth century, but were subsequently restored by a master seventeenth century triangle restorer. Sorry I can't tell you much about them; I've never seen this particular set before.

"I wonder if they've had them appraised recently; perhaps we could turn a slight profit for once...."

While she examined the instrument, Pudding had been busy with a tape measure, a step ladder and some string. "Do you think", he said, "that someone could have broken in in the middle of the night to steal these antique triangles by running a rope from their stand, up over the chandelier, down under the door, over to the mantel, around the woodwind section and finally, using the piano as a counterweight, out of the window; when young Tritium, on his way up from the cellar by the back stairs, heard the rope rasping against this krummhorn holder and, seeing the door jerking unnaturally back and forth, foolishly decided to investigate. Pausing only to go back and get a gun, or having previously decided to take it back up to bed, he would have come storming into the music room, gun in hand, only to be fiendishly jabbed under the armpits by the villain who thus unwittingly caused the gun to go off, severing the rope and allowing the piano to fall on his head, whereupon the villain took the gun and the rope to conceal his guilt and escaped by jumping from this third story window into ...", he looked out the window, "... the well, surrounded as it is by steel spikes and the kennel of the six great slavering guard dogs?"

"No, dear, there's no bullet hole in the ceiling. But it's worth remembering in case we don't think of anything more convincing."

After a heavy and faintly metallic supper, everyone went to bed early.

Pudding's room, adjacent on the north to Primus' and on the south to Pauline's, and being directly across the hallway from Illegitimus', which was itself between the library by the front stairs and the guest room where Flora slept by the back, was most notable for being, as it turned out, Dubia's.

Dubia was already in bed and feigning sleep when Pudding came back from Flora's, passing Pauline in the hallway; he was feeling quite spent until, undoing his tie, he suddenly realised that beneath the covers Dubia was wearing an ostrich suit. She grabbed him by the shoulders, pulled him back onto the bed, and breathed, "Can you examine me now? I'm sure I'm suspicious."

"All right." he said, "What's the capital of Bulgaria?"

She looked at him a little oddly. "You aren't going to be difficult, are you?" she asked, seemingly on the edge of tears.

"There, there my little mortgage. What sort of questions would you like to be asked?"

"You could ask me what I like."

"All right, what do you like?"

"I like whips and barnacles and puppies and corpses and rich people and strawberries and being tied to trees with liquorice bootlaces, and I'd do just anything to be a murder suspect. Especially your murder suspect. Do you have any handcuffs?"

"No, not on me." he replied truthfully.

"Pity." She nibbled his shins.

"Why do you like rich people? Don't you have enough money of your own?"

"No, we aren't really as wealthy as it might seem. My father, you see, took all of our money and put it in a bank. Now, most weeks, we scarcely have two pennies to rub together." She stopped talking.

"Ah, that would explain the liquorice as well. Oh, no, don't stop just yet."

Before breakfast the next morning, while untying his clothing from Dubia's pet snake, Pudding happened upon a note in an envelope glued to the bottom of a locked drawer in her bureau. It was written on rose-scented paper in lavender ink. The hand was that of a fairly intelligent left-handed homosexual with a very short life-line and a wardrobe of silk shirts. He pocketed it hurriedly as Antonia knocked on the door and invited him down to eat.

After shooting the guard dogs and making a cursory examination of the well beneath the music room window and finding nothing more interesting than a ladder and a twig-entangled tightrope hidden down it, he decided to question the members of the family in depth about their relationships to the victim. For this purpose he set up an office in the library.

Once again he dealt with people logically, in order of height, although he substituted Illegitimus for Ganges, the gardener, since Ganges was clearly unimportant.

His first interviewee, therefore, was Sir Reginald himself. Sir Reginald made no bones about it. He had hated his youngest son in all things but that he had rather admired his skill as a carpet-layer. "But even among carpet layers", Sir Reginald attested, "he was known to be venomous, squirming vermin. My only regret is that I didn't kill him myself."

"Are you, or have you ever been, a carpet layer, Sir Reginald?"

"Only an amateur, Mr. Pudding, only an amateur." He turned to leave.

"Oh, one more thing, Sir Reginald."

"Yes?"

"Did you hear anything on the night of your son's death?"

"Such as?"

"Oh, such as, for example, the sound of a grand piano being dropped eight or ten feet onto someone's head?"

"No, not at all; but I'm a very sound sleeper, Mr. Pudding."

His second interviewee, Primus Smith-Smythe, was little more informative.

"Let me be frank, Mr. Pudding." he said. Windsor Pudding manfully restrained himself from making a rather cruel pun. "Tritium's only friends were carpet layers and hairdressers. He was a queer, Mr. Pudding, and all the world despises queers. Myself, I kill them. I think you saw my tattoo. Oh, now wait a minute, Mr. Pudding, I didn't kill my brother; I have far too much respect for music." He pulled a crumpled programme from his jacket pocket. "See? Here, I'm playing Titania. I was out drinking after the show when the marvelous event occurred. My! That would make a good alibi, too, wouldn't it, except we were all too drunk to remember."

"Yes, yes," said Pudding, deep in thought. "I always did like Pinafore."

Pauline Anatomy was in a sullen mood. She pulled her long, elegant legs up onto the armchair where she sat for grilling and looked angry. "I never liked the way that child looked at his mother, Mr. Pudding." she observed, "She's my territory and I'm glad he's dead."

"Do you know," he asked carefully, "who killed him?"

"Oh, yes."

"And would you tell me," he asked more carefully still, "who that was?"

"Antonia Smith-Smythe, Mr. Pudding. It was an accident, though. She was trying to kill her husband. We'd made plans about it for weeks. We were going to kill him and then elope to Spain or the New World or something, somewhere where they're less funny about incest -- Antonia is my sister, you know. So we'd taken Sir Reginald's favourite piano-hoist, I think you've seen him playing with it, so it would look like suicide, and hoisted the piano up to the ceiling; and then Antonia was to lie in wait behind the door and drop it on his head when he came in to put the newest bassoon in his famous collection into the safe. Only something must have gone wrong; perhaps Tritium surprised her, perhaps she carelessly let go of the rope while playing the flute with him.

"There was a terrible crashing noise at three o' clock in the morning and I rushed to the music room and found it deserted except for the piano and young Tritium's body. Hastily I detached the piano-hoist, it didn't look plausible, for Tritium would never have risked getting bits of brain on his father's best hoist, and ran to Sir Reginald's room to put it back on his dresser by the lobster tank. Doubtless that's why you found my fingerprints all over the piano hoist, the piano, Tritium's neck and the attic window immediately above the music room."

"Thank you, Miss Anatomy." said Pudding. "It really should have occurred to me to look for fingerprints. If I need you again, will I be able to get in touch with you?"

"Well, I was planning to go to town this afternoon and get some tarantulas for Sir Reginald, but I could put it off until tomorrow."

"No, that won't be necessary. If you'll be back tonight, I'm sure that will be fine."

Illegitimus, now. Illegitimus knew nothing. Illegitimus thought nothing. Illegitimus had heard nothing. Illegitimus was a nobody. He was probably as guilty as hell, but his tenuous mode of existence made it impossible to pin anything on him. Pudding thought of using nails, but he didn't have a hammer and his shoes were new.

Next on the list was Dubia. Flora brought her in, and she seated herself in the armchair. "Dubia, dearest, there's something here I'd like you to tell me about." He took out the letter. "Do you recognise this letter?"

"I don't know. It looks like any one of the notes that my darling brother used to send me, setting up an assignation, telling naughty stories, love notes, asking me to take some books back to the library."

Pudding read it aloud.

She broke down in tears.

"Yes, yes, he was blackmailing me. He told me that if I didn't keep the fact that he was blackmailing me a secret, he would tell the world that he was blackmailing me by threatening to tell the world that he was blackmailing me to keep his blackmailing me a secret thereby besmirching the family name, thereby besmirching the family name. There! I've said it and I'm glad. Family name-besmirched perhaps, but glad."

"Did you kill him?"

"No! Honestly, no. Sometimes I dress up as a gypsy and mysteriously garrotte the odd wandering hiker who has become lost in the foggy marshes, but I wouldn't kill family. But we could always pretend! Would that help?"

"That makes more than a little sense:" he muttered, "you really don't seem strong enough to lift a piano on your own. So now we have a motive, a victim and an instrument on the victim, but no suspect. Not so bad, I suppose."

Antonia was trying to kill herself by swallowing her bed when finally they found her. Pudding took the opportunity to take the piano hoist from its accustomed place by the tank on the dresser. Tying Antonia to the armchair in the library and shining a gaslamp in her face, they set about questioning her.

"Antonia Smith-Smythe!" said Pudding, waving the piano-hoist, "Have you ever seen this hoist before?"

"Mmnphh r pphrrrt!" she said as Flora loosened her gag, "It's my husband's favourite. Reginald's."

"Do you know where it was on the night that Tritium died?"

"By the lobsters. That is where my husband always keeps it when he's not playing with it or hoisting pianos."

"Did you have any involvement at all with Tritium's death, Antonia?"

"My darling Tritium! No! Of course not!"

"Where were you that fateful night?"

"In Pauline's room. I had given Reginald his sleeping pills, as Pauline had suggested, and I was waiting for her. With the mink. I remember distinctly, because they wouldn't settle down."

"And when did she arrive?" said Flora.

"She never did. All of a sudden, in the middle of the night, there was this horrible noise, like a piano falling about eleven and a half feet onto someone's head."

"What was it?"

"A piano falling about eleven and a half feet onto someone's head. I measured very carefully."

"How did you know how far the piano fell before you measured?"

"I have a very good ear, Mr. Pudding, and Pauline and I used to be semi-professional piano hurlers in Peru."

"Had you ever heard a piano land on someone's head before that night?"

"Only in bar brawls."

"Did you go and investigate the source of the noise immediately?"

"No, I went up to the attic to see oops! I mean I went straight back to bed, I think. Probably with my husband."

"Thankyou for your help, Mrs. Smith-Smythe. Tell me, does this household have a spare piano hoist?"

"No! I keep talking to my husband about it, but he insists that one per room is enough."

Salmonella, the cook, was busy making lunch, and so they joined her in the kitchen.

"What a lovely poison rack you have, dear!" said Pudding.

"I've been collecting them for some years, Sir." she replied. "But they keep disappearing. Do you think I should get a lock for it?"

"It might be a good idea. But on the other hand, you never know when you're going to have to get something out in a hurry."

"That's what I think. Quick to act, slow to think, that's me."

"Tell me, dear, do you live in the house?" asked Flora.

"This house? Yes, yes."

"And were you here on the night that young Tritium died?" picked up Pudding.

"Yes, yes. There was a horrible noise, rather like the sound of a piano falling from about eight inches below the ceiling and landing plop! crash! on someone's head."

"Did you investigate?"

"Investigate? Oh, the noise. No, no. I was too scared. Plus, I don't do pianos. I just put my head under the pillow and went back to sleep."

"But if you don't do pianos, how did you know how far the piano had fallen?"

"I used to be a ceiling tuner, until my sister came to her untimely end."

"A ceiling tuner? I've never heard of such a thing!" Pudding ejaculated.

"That's how my lawyer convinced the judge I was mad."

Finally, there was Holly, the maid. On the fateful night, it seemed, she had been out seeing a young man from the village. Returning home early in the morning, she had met Antonia, Pauline, Sir Reginald and Salmonella wandering about the house on the way to her bed. Each of them in turn, on seeing her, had hidden.

"Being a discreet sort of maid, and what with their not exactly approving of Albert, my friend, I didn't let on that I had seen a thing. Nor would I except for this horrible killing."

"You're certain it was a murder, then?" asked Pudding.

"Oh, yes, young Tritium told me so himself. Do you need me for owt else? For if not, I'd best be delivering him his lunch."

Flora looked at Pudding who, in his turn, looked back.

"Would you mind terribly," said Flora, "if we came along?"

"Oh, not at all! Come on! It's so dismal in the attic," she explained, "and it always makes me think of ghosts."

Holly, carrying a covered dish of something smelling faintly of pit-viper venom, lead them up the back stairs and along a narrow passageway under the eaves. The attic was, in fact, quite dingy, and made them think of ghosts. They stopped at a door which seemed to be immediately over the music room.

"Should I knock? You seem to have your hands full." said Flora.

"Much obliged." said Holly.

A voice came from within. "Come!"

They entered.

Inside there was a young man. "Hello!" he said.

"Hello. I'm Windsor Pudding, and this is my housekeeper, Flora."

"I'm Tritium Smith-Smythe. What can I do for you?"

"Er.... I thought ... um...." said Pudding. "My, this is a surprise!"

"We thought," said Flora carefully, "you were rather, um, dead."

"Oh, yes!" said Tritium cheerfully, "and I expect you're famous detectives, here to investigate my killing. Pretty spectacular way to die, don't you think?"

"Well, it certainly adds a touch of colour to the music room.

"Tell me, would you be able to spare a few minutes to answer some questions? It might help if you lay down, that would effectively reduce your height."

"Well, alright, I don't see why not." said Tritium.

"If you are, in fact, dead ..." began Pudding;

"Yes?"

"... then why are you living in the attic?"

"So no one will suspect me of having killed myself."

"Ah. And why did you kill yourself?"

"Oh, has that been worrying you? I'm so sorry. You see, for some years before my death I had been, much as it pains me to admit it, blackmailing my sister Dubia. I didn't want her to reveal the fact that I was blackmailing her, you see; so I threatened to tell the world how I was vilely blackmailing her, thereby besmirching the family name, lest she besmirch the family name. By telling, you know."

"Yes, I know."

"But after some years, you see, I realised what a vile thing this was that I had been doing to my poor innocent, well you know what I mean, rather fun but sort of nice in a wicked sort of way, sister. So I determined to kill myself. And I did it, you see! I dropped a piano on my head. Well! That's a load off my mind."

"Good. Well, I think that clears everything up. But you'd probably better come with us; suicide is still illegal in this country, even if you did have a very good reason.

"There's just one other little thing...."

"Yes?"

"How did, pardon me, such a lightly built man as yourself, ever lift a piano eleven and a half feet off the ground?"

"I didn't. Not at all. I just wandered into the music room, and there it was, suspended by rope and hoist, from the chandelier. I think mother and Pauline had been trying to bump off father again, you know; only mother's rather half-hearted about it, she really prefers me to Pauline. But in any case, I came into the music room, and there it was, just hanging, at exactly the right height, with me standing under it. So I cut the rope, snick! crash! and killed myself. And came up here, to my private room."

Detective Inspector Invective Defector was just arriving at the station as they left, Dubia having given her word of honour that she would not garrotte them on the way. The train ride back to London was uneventful; on the way Flora had a rather morbid discussion with Tritium on the subject of his murderous technique.

"You see," said Tritium, "one day I was playing with my christmas present, a compass, and a magnet. And I said, do you know? there must be a reason why this works. So I jotted down a few equations on an envelope." He took out a pencil and paper and started writing notes for Flora. "It looked promising when a characterisation of gravitation dropped out, something I'd also been worrying over for a number of years; but I needed some kind of empirical test of my theories.

"So I constructed this very long, rapidly rotating, ultra-massive cylinder, and by travelling around it, you see...."

"Oh! You could travel backwards in time. Well, well, well. I have some friends I think might be interested in that. Would you mind?"

"Honestly, I'd rather you didn't let it get about; I want to use it to surprise Dubia."

Windsor Flaming Fish Pudding ignored this womanish stupidity and got on with his crochet.

The jury returned a verdict of justifiable suicide, and the happy family was soon reunited.

Copyright © 1997 Stephen P Spackman. All rights reserved.
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