Hallowe'en Trick or Treat Meme
29 Oct 2011 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thisbluespiritMemed from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
justice_turtle and dbskyler:
In honor of All Hallow's Eve, I'm inviting trick-or-treaters to my 'door.' Comment "trick-or-treat" to this post and...well, you know the drill. Treats can be anything that strikes my fancy (pics of fave actors or pairings, one sentence fics, graphics, a few words why I'm glad to have you on my flist, etc. etc.). The more "houses" to visit the more fun it'll be, so go ahead, open your journal and help spread the fun!
(It'll be better than me waffling on forever about happy letters...)
justice_turtle and dbskyler:In honor of All Hallow's Eve, I'm inviting trick-or-treaters to my 'door.' Comment "trick-or-treat" to this post and...well, you know the drill. Treats can be anything that strikes my fancy (pics of fave actors or pairings, one sentence fics, graphics, a few words why I'm glad to have you on my flist, etc. etc.). The more "houses" to visit the more fun it'll be, so go ahead, open your journal and help spread the fun!
(It'll be better than me waffling on forever about happy letters...)
no subject
Date: 29 Oct 2011 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 30 Oct 2011 05:39 pm (UTC)***
Dr John Smith had suddenly recalled that he was actually Sir John Smith Pearsby of Scotland Yard – it was finding his police badge and papers that did it – and abandoned his assumed persona of bored academic and amateur forger to hasten to the house of Lady Pollard, who was complaining that a pink elephant had been stolen from the stables.
This should have seemed a little unlikely, but somehow it didn’t.
*
“Thank you for coming, Inspector,” said Lady Louisa. “It must sound rather odd, but my husband is away and I hardly knew what else to do.”
He nodded. “Perhaps you can enlighten me, Lady Pollard – was this a misleadingly named horse called Pink Elephant or has a large and unusually-hued pachyderm actually gone missing?”
“It was an elephant,” she admitted. “The circus were in dire need and wanted somewhere to put her -.”
“Her?”
She glanced at him in mild surprise. “Pearl,” she informed him. “The pink elephant. She’s terribly rare and relatively small as elephants go. And now she’s vanished. I don’t know what to make of it and the owner of the circus is being quite beastly about it.”
“I see,” he murmured. He didn’t, not yet, but it wouldn’t do to admit to bafflement to civilians quite so soon. “I think I had better question the rest of the household.”
*
He started with the daughter of the household, since he assumed that if anyone was likely to have had the time and inclination to take an interest in a visiting elephant, it would be young Miss Pollard.
*
“Did you want to take my fingerprints?” Miss Pollard asked almost immediately on entering the room. “I don’t mind, you know. I think this is all jolly exciting. Much more fun than that dreadful murder with Miss Wright and Professor Smith.”
He coughed. “Miss Pollard -?”
“I’ve been looking for footprints because you’d think an elephant would leave some, but no luck. I’m sure you must have done, though. I expect you’re dreadfully clever. Did you?”
“Miss Pollard, if I could just -.”
She leant forward. “I think that circus owner had something to do with it. I mean, it’s awfully suspicious, isn’t it? ‘By the way, Lady Pollard, do you want to look after my pink elephant?’ and two minutes later someone’s swiped the animal. Maybe it’s an insurance fraud?”
“Miss Pollard!”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sure you’ve thought of all that already. I should say that I’m sure it’s not Jem the stable boy, because he would never harm an animal. I can give you my word on that.”
“If I could possibly -.”
She turned thoughtful. “Why would someone steal an elephant? I mean, there’s been no ransom note and unless it’s one of those professional burglars looking for a challenge -.”
He gave up on doing the interrogation himself. “Do you want to join the police force?”
“Oh, no. I’m going to be an explorer,” she returned. “Mind you, it would be a thrill. Can I be your plucky assistant?”
He said, “I’d be delighted, but you’re still a suspect, young lady.”
“Oh, so I am. How funny. What about if you search my room and check there are no elephants there?”
He paused. “You might, having time on your hands, think this sort of thing an amusing practical joke.”
“Well!” She stared at him open-mouthed. “Do you know, I think that might be the rottenest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
He shrugged. “It had to be asked.”
“Have you any reason to believe I’m the sort of girl who goes around pinching pink elephants for a lark?”
Sir John swallowed. “You did try to run away from home last month.”
“That’s different. That was because Mother was talking about having me presented again and I said -.”
He gave in. “You know, I could use a plucky young assistant. I don’t know how it is, but police sergeants never have a proper sense of humour.”
“That’s an unfair generalisation,” she pointed out.
He smiled at her. “So it is. Perhaps you could tell me if you’ve observed anything unusual around the house and the grounds in the past few days?”
***
no subject
Date: 30 Oct 2011 06:09 pm (UTC)***
“Do you think it was somehow airlifted away?” suggested Charley.
He considered that. “It’s an interesting suggestion, but again, we come back to the fact that no one saw anything. Flying elephants are not common.”
“No-o,” she admitted. “But land-travelling ones leave footprints or tyre marks if they’ve been carted off.”
He said, “You know, I think I understand what this is about – at least in part.”
“Oh? You are clever, John.”
He frowned momentarily. “That’s Mr – or Inspector – or possible Sir John Ap – what was my name again?”
“Pearsby, I think.”
He nodded. “Well, it appears to me that we’ve been unfortunate enough to find ourselves in a Michael Innes parody. We’re only lucky that no one’s run off with a building yet.”
“I see,” said Charley. “I mean, I don’t, but it sounds about as likely as anything else, although I thought it was more like something out of a book by Joan Aiken.”
He looked at her. “Charley, this is the 1950s -.”
“1940s.”
“Whichever, it’s confusing enough without you bringing in books that were written in the 1960s and 1970s – and which, therefore, you couldn’t have read anyway.”
Charley paused. “I have. They were jolly good fun, too. I suspect it must have been in your library.”
“My library? What library?”
She said, “I think I’m beginning to get a headache. But there was a pink whale and nasty Hanoverians with a gun that could shoot across the Atlantic, although it wasn’t going to do Nantucket any good.”
“Well, unless any plucky, streetwise orphans turn up, I think we’ll stick with my theory. And it really is a shame. Given that I was supposed to be an academic, it could at least have been Edmund Crispin.”
Charley sighed. “But the elephant?”
“The elephant is, I believe, a red herring.”
“Now you’re just being silly!”
He directed a reproachful look at her out of blue, blue eyes. “Charley. Why would anyone want to steal an elephant? Aside from a small amount of ivory from the tusks, there’s little motive to be had. Pearl is only valuable if she can be exhibited. If she is exhibited, the perpetrator is immediately discovered. Therefore the theft of the elephant is in fact a distraction and what we need to discover is what else occurred that night that was overlooked in the light of that more obvious event.”
“Yes,” she said, her voice faltering. “I mean, that’s jolly clever and what have you, but I still don’t understand what someone did with the elephant.”
He faced her, with a stern light in his eyes. “We’re never going to get anywhere until we stop looking at the elephant. From now on, we are going to study everything else until we uncover an explanation.”
“Hmm.”
He smiled at her. “I see you’re dubious, Charley. I understand, but you must bear in mind that our elephant-thief is not necessarily sane.”
“Ah,” she said. “Well, that would explain a lot.”
***
no subject
Date: 30 Oct 2011 08:54 pm (UTC)(I particularly liked the Inspector attempting to question Miss Pollard).
no subject
Date: 31 Oct 2011 08:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 31 Oct 2011 03:11 pm (UTC)“The elephant is, I believe, a red herring.”
And Charley! Hello again!
no subject
Date: 31 Oct 2011 04:59 pm (UTC)Did you not want a treat? (I'm not madly into Hallowe'en, but 'treats' for flisters, well... ;-D)
(PS. I was going to give you a poem. Not one what I wrote, don't worry. :-p)
no subject
Date: 31 Oct 2011 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 1 Nov 2011 01:20 pm (UTC)Here is a pome what I didn't write. I like it, but it is important to bear in mind that it got tangled in my head with a post nuclear fallout book I was reading at the time (which was a long while ago). So it is an Apocalyptic poem, even if it actually isn't:
*
The Child Dying by Edwin Muir
Unfriendly friendly universe,
I pack your stars into my purse,
And bid you so farewell.
That I can leave you, quite go out,
Go out, go out beyond all doubt,
My father says, is the miracle.
You are so great, and I so small:
I am nothing, you are all:
Being nothing, I can take this way.
Oh I need neither rise nor fall,
For when I do not move at all
I shall be out of all your day.
It's said some memory will remain
In the other place, grass in the rain,
Light on the land, sun on the sea,
A flitting grace, a phantom face,
But the world is out. There is not place
Where it and its ghost can ever be.
Father, father, I dread this air
Blown from the far side of despair
The cold cold corner. What house, what hold,
What hand is there? I look and see
Nothing-filled eternity,
And the great round world grows weak and old.
Hold my hand, oh hold it fast-
I am changing! - until at last
My hand in yours no more will change,
Though yours change on. You here, I there,
So hand in hand, twin-leafed despair -
I did not know death was so strange.
no subject
Date: 5 Nov 2011 02:47 pm (UTC)Unfriendly friendly universe,
I pack your stars into my purse
Ugh.
no subject
Date: 5 Nov 2011 04:55 pm (UTC)(I copied it out long ago from a textbook for English Lit - it had Six Modern Poets, and our teacher kept making us read Robert Frost for no good reason, and I would be sneakily reading this one. As a teenager, I had a preference for death and angst over mending a wall and milking the cow. Obviously, I've long since forgiven Mr Frost for having the misfortune to be the favourite poet of a quite dreadful teacher. Of course, in this instance, I just found it on the internet...)
no subject
Date: 6 Nov 2011 10:49 am (UTC)Ha, don't all teenagers have a preference for death and angst? I need only flip through my secret notebooks of appalling fic (not that I realised at the time that it was fic - and not that I flip through them now if I can at all help it!)
no subject
Date: 6 Nov 2011 07:07 pm (UTC)