Hallowe'en Trick or Treat Meme
Memed from 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 ( Read more... )
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 ( Read more... )
***
“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.”
***
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(I particularly liked the Inspector attempting to question Miss Pollard).
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“The elephant is, I believe, a red herring.”
And Charley! Hello again!
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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)
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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.
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Unfriendly friendly universe,
I pack your stars into my purse
Ugh.
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(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...)
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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!)
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