“Detective Sergeant White and Constable Walnut. We’d like to ask you some questions.”
“I’m rather busy, gentlemen. Come back tomorrow,” and he starts eating another crumpet.
“Who is your employer, Mr Poppy?”
“I am the owner, but I suppose my employer in a broader sense would be Death,” and he looks very amused with himself.
“Very funny. What can you tell me about the Butterfly Club?”
Mr Poppy’s face stretches into ice. “Never heard of them.”
“Really? I was under the belief that you got rid of the dead bodies for them.”
“Rumours ain’t proof.” He sneers and throws a crumpet at Walnut’s head, which boings off and out the door.
“That’s assaulting a police officer,” says Walnut, and whips out his handcuffs.
“I THREW A FUCKING CRUMPET AT YOU, THAT AIN’T ASSAULT!”
“Assault with a deadly weapon,” replies Walnut approaching him.
“EXPLAIN TO ME HOW A CRUMPET IS DEADLY?” screams Mr Poppy in exasperation.
Walnut picks up the crumpet and punches him in the face with it. Mr Poppy falls off his chair and lies on the floor unmoving.
I turn, quite astonished to Walnut. “Sometimes you really surprise me.”
He grins. “Thank you, sir.”
Mr Poppy after a while regains consciousness and stands up rather creakily and removes a pistol from his jacket. Points it at my head.
“Boys!” he shouts. Two rather burly looking meat-heads appear. “Boys,” repeats Mr Poppy.
“Yes, Dad?” one of them replies.
“We have a little problem.”
Walnut and I are escorted at gun point into the back room, where two large black coffins rest.
“Get in,” Mr Poppy says, waggling the gun in my face.
“Mr Poppy,” I say, trying to reason with him.
“Get in!” he screeches.
The coffin lid shuts with a gentle click. Mr Poppy’s fingers tap the surface, humming to himself. I can see nothing. I am submerged in inky blackness.
I hear Mr Poppy’s toad-croaking voice above me, “Silly policemen. Really, what were you thinking?”
A few hours pass and then I can feel the coffin being lifted and the lid tapped again.
“Detective…” Mr Poppy is laughing. “You’re off to be buried. A lovely little spot in St Augustine’s churchyard. Ha ha ha ha.”
I pound my fists against the lid. “Release me!”
Rufus Hazard’s London Residence, “Dumplings”, Mayfair
Loveheart recovers
Ooh I had a little sleep. Feel much better now. I am lying on a pink sofa being fed buttered tea cakes and Turkish coffee.
“A man must have his teacake,” says Rufus stuffing one into his mouth. “How are you feeling old boy? Have the drugs worn off yet?”
My head is a fuzz.
“I have always had the feeling that the prime minister was an unscrupulous cad!” sniffs Rufus, and passes me a teacake with extra splodge of jam.
I have a fluffy blanket and cushion for my head. Boo Boo is also eating a teacake, and reading Mrs Charm’s novel The Cannibal Bishop of Edinburgh, which I have heard is a murder mystery set in a sinister Abbey and involves missing monks and a suspicious gigantic shepherds’ pie.
“When you feel better, you must decapitate that wretch Heap. Give him a good thrashing. Unspeakable bad manners leaving a man with his head in a bowl of trifle.”
Death appears with a basket of fruit. “Feeling better?”
“I have a terrible headache and ghastly flashbacks about spoons,” I say and bite into the teacake.
Death hands me a banana. “Get to St Augustine’s Church as soon as possible. Detective White and Constable Walnut are experiencing a premature burial.”
To the rescue!
St Augustine’s Church is tiny, decrepit and overrun with weeds. Apart from the dead body of a vagrant lying face down on the path, the only source of activity is a funeral service where two coffins are being lowered into the earth by two large ruffians. A bedraggled vicar is reading a mumbled sermon. He appears to be drunk. I grab Boo Boo’s hand.
“I think we’ve found them!” We approach the ruffians boldly.
“Hello, gentlemen,” I say. “So who are you burying today?”
The vicar, whose eyes are red and bulging, begins to speak, but belches rather loudly instead, to his own mortification.
“Never heard of them,” I reply.
“Open the coffins,” Boo Boo says, pointing her blades at one of the thugs. He laughs, which is often, I have discovered, a mistake with her. One of her blades embeds itself in his brain and he falls aside like a sack of potatoes. The vicar screams like a little girl.
“Open the coffins,” she repeats to the other thug who obediently does as she requests. She then shoots the other of her blades into his brain like an arrow.
“Ooooooh, good shot!” I cry, clapping my hands.
Constable Walnut and Detective White emerge from their tombs, shaken but steady. I keep an eye on the Vicar.
“You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“I had no idea they were alive,” he replies, nervously.
“Oh really?”