Tuesday, June the 29th, 2004

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The Stench From Outer Space

Detective Captain Pondbedwas a worried man. He flung himself into an armchair, his pipe clenched between his jaws, then called out for Mungo, his factotum. Within seconds a tall, impossibly handsome fellow strode confidently into the detective's study.

“Fetch me some balsa wood!” rapped Pondbed at this Ray Milland de nos jours.

“At once, Master,” snivelled Mungo, before adding, “You know you are becoming as irritable as Sir Denis Nayland Smith in the Fu Manchu stories by Sax Rohmer, don't you? You ought to take up a sport. I have heard it said that the Pang Hill bobsleigh team is looking for a new recruit.”

Pondbed almost bit the stem of his pipe in two before shouting something unprintable at his servant, who had already glided out of the room. It was Thursday morning, and the weather outside was spectacular and frightening.

By the time Mungo returned, an hour later, with a balsa wood crate packed with hundreds of sticks of balsa wood, Detective Captain Pondbed had completed a pencil drawing of Mary Jo Kopechne, who died at Chappaquiddick. He had begun the drawing some months earlier, but he was nothing if not a perfectionist, a trait he had inherited from his mother, who, he recalled with a curious admixture of fondness and regret, had been known to arrive at railway stations with more than four days to spare before the departure of her train, in order to familiarise herself with the shift patterns of the tea-room persons. The angle of the detective's hat caused Mungo concern, and he stooped over to straighten it. As he did so, Pondbed grabbed the crate.

“What is that hideous screeching noise, Mungo?” asked Pondbed, his pallid face screwed into prune-like wrinkles. The factotum looked out of the window.

“Oh, just one of the local hobbledehoys tormenting voles,” he said. At that very moment there was a monstrous flash of lightning, and a spacecraft landed outside the town swimming baths, directly across the road. The spacecraft was one of those smelly ones. The noise it made as it came into land was so loud that Pondbed spilled the sticks of balsa wood all over his recently shampooed carpet.

“Confound these pesky alien interlopers!” he rapped. Mungo took the pencil drawing and pinned it to the wall above the fireplace. The Invasion of Earth had begun in earnest…

Source : Captain Pondbed's Casebook by Clovis Lanternjaw