20. A FEW TRUE WORDS

THE CASE OF THE DIAMOND DENTURES 20

There was a round of applause that Angelina was certain was ironic, but Blinky reacted in the only way that, possibly, he could because of the sort of man he was.

His face assumed a delighted beam as he shuffled off the weariness that was threatening to overtake him, and despite still being without much in the way of vision and with legs encased in nothing but boxer shorts, he held up both of his hands.

“Well thank you, thank you, thank you, friends...” he began, a truly ludicrous sight dressed in little more than his underwear and with all the rest of him smeared with unmentionable fluids from the landfill site.

“It’s not your birthday, fool!” hissed Angelina into his ears as she tried to support Royston by gripping him by the crotch in a way that ought to have made his eyes water, but didn’t due to him being in a virtually comatose state.

“You what?” blabbered Blinky.

“It’s not your birthday!” she repeated. “That was six weeks ago and I bought you one of those ball point pens that shows the tacky image of a woman undressing when you hold it ready to write, and you said you’d always wanted one and you grabbed me by my bottomand gave it an unsavoury squeeze in gratitude!”

“Oh … er… I would never, not me, not in a million years, but I love the pen...” stammered her employer, and she turned to the small crowd, most of whom were still applauding.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m prepared to bet it has something to do with a certain barmaid, late of this pub,” she said in a voice that held a spine-chilling degree of threat as she stepped forwards. She might have been an extremely attractive young woman, but she had a huge amount of control over her own voice which, in its turn, exercised a huge amount of control over anyone in earshot “Look, we’ve not had the most pleasant evening and night and need to get some sleep. We’ll give you full explanations when we’ve recovered.”

“That’s our Janie all over,” called out one of the revellers, “and she insisted we celebrate your leader’s seventieth, though to my eyes he’s doing well for a seventy year old, and I should know, I’m the village doctor.”

“Thing is,” began Inspector Gadgett, “you tried your practical joke on us, and most amusing it was, and we even started to believe old Nobby was dead. Trouble is he seems to have taken himself off for walkies. He likes going for nice long walks. This is a beautiful part of the world as you’ll have noticed, and we all like to get out and enjoy it when we can. And old Nobby’s the sort to spend all night walking along bridleways and the like, enjoying the scenery, and coming home at dawn ready for a hearty breakfast.”

“Walking in the dark?” asked Angelina, sarcastically.

“Well, he’s probably taken Janie with him,” nodded the doctor, “and he’s right fond of our Janie, is Nobby. He gets up to some of his tricks with her and there’s no doubt she enjoys what they get up to on the quiet when nobody’s watching. Might be a bit on the naughty side sometimes but in all truth it does neither of them any harm, nor anyone else if it comes to that, so what’s the harm?”

“And you think that’s what he’s doing now?” asked Angelina, “but if he is, if he’s got his trousers round his ankles and his tongue down her throat, what’s he doing in that old tin bath down the pub’s cellar?”

“Oh, that was his charity trick, but he’s done it, we’ve had it on the telly and he’s sodded off on a jaunt with Janie, and there’s nowt down the cellar but a bath of cold beer and an old telly camera whatsit.” grinned the doctor. “I popped down to see, and if he was, what you said, dead, I was ready to sign a death certificate. But there wasn’t any corpse anywhere. He’ll be back any time soon, take my word for it.”

Angelina turned to Royston, who was coming round and trying not to because it crossed his mind that being supported by the crotch in nothing more than his underwear was all he’d ever wanted to experience. She shook her hand free as soon as he was self-supporting, and scowled at him.

“Did you hear that nonsense?” she asked.

He looked beseechingly at her but when it was plain she wasn’t going to hold him up any longer he nodded.

“And Nobby?” she asked him, “tell these good people what Nobby was doing last time you saw him.”

“Oh,” he mumbled, then he looked Inspector Gadgett straight in the eyes. “The Inspector here knows what I saw,” he said, “he knows, because he saw it too. The Landlord is dead. As simple as that. I saw it with my own eyes, and there’s no doubting it. Now I’d like to ask you all to make way for us, I need my beauty sleep and it’s been a long time since I had any. Look: it’s just about dawn and we’ve been charging around the countryside all night, and going on HRH’s government's business, and we’re all fairly knackered.”

And having said that he led Blinky and Angelina out of the lounge and towards the tortuous route towards their rooms.

“Just a moment!” called Inspector Gadgett, “just a word to the wise, if you don’t mind. Not everything needs be what it seems to be. Old Nobby looked a bit pale, that’s true, sitting up in that bath of old ale, but it’s plain that he’s gone for one of his walks and that no crime has been committed. You do believe that, don’t you?”

Blinky’s eyesight chose that moment to return to full working order, and he shook his head vigorously.

“What I believe isn’t important,” he said, probably too loud for the early hours of the morning. “No, what is important is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and that is there was a sudden downpour a couple of hours ago and you want us to believe that a weary pub landlord at the end of a busy day goes for a stroll in a storm like that one was? And stays out? When the last time my sergeant saw him he was so dead you could smell him decomposing as he rotted away?”

Then the three Curmudgeons walked off, trying to look as if they were in control of everything, when they weren’t even in control of their own wearily flickering eyes.

It took them all of ten minutes to find their rooms and on top of that at least ten seconds to fall asleep.

Blinky was on his own because by some trick of fate Royston had accompanied Angelina into the double room, but unfortunately they didn’t even have chance to bid each other a belated goodnight before sleep overtook the pair of them.

Royston’s last thought before he slumbered was how cruel life can be in the middle of the night when you’ve got plans of a romantic nature and you go to sleep instead.

© Peter Rogerson, 31.01.20