Sunday, September the 19th, 2004
back to: title, date or indexes
No evildoer was safe when Special Agent Rastus Blot was on the case. Never in the annals of crime and its detection has there been a more successful operative. Not for Blot the ratiocinative methods of Sherlock Holmes or Prince Zaleski, nor the pathologically violent approach of Spillane's Mike Hammer. Whether the dread deed was a polite country house murder or a lowlife robbery, Blot had a singular advantage over his rivals. Let us watch him at work, and then, children, I shall quiz you to see if you can spot the wellspring of his genius.
The crime : a bloated janitor is found done to death in the locked boiler room of the Pang Hill Spangle Factory. His recent behaviour had been irksome.
The clues : anomalous items discovered in the vicinity include an old Wishbone Ash LP, minus its sleeve; a defaced railway timetable showing signs of having been gnawed by a hamster or a vole; the bones of an osprey, picked clean; a photographic still of Gary Cooper as Howard Roark in the film of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead; and a reduced-price jar of sump oil. Witness statements indicate that during the previous night a series of banshee-like caterwaulings could be heard, coming from o'er yonder in the direction of the Place of Flapping and Rumpus up in the sinister hills.
The suspects : nobody.
Agent Blot was called in after the police drew a blank. Greasy hair plastered flat on his head, his eyes milky with some hideous optical disease, and short of breath, Blot demanded a slap-up dinner consisting almost entirely of recovered meat products. He bought copies of all the local newspapers, investigated a slab of masonry, took photographs of bees, wasps, and hornets, and devoted three days to cutting a slot into a cardboard tube using a pair of scissors and a nail file. Dust gathered on his epaulettes and he made no attempt to brush it off. He went angling in brackish streams, accompanied by a slovenly farmer's wife and her slovenly dog. Easter was approaching. Blot had a number of prolonged fits, but whether they were genuine or feigned was open to question, not least by the sheriff, a giant bear of a man whose beard was used as a floor mop. On the Saturday, eighteen townsfolk were arrested, charged with the murder of the bloated janitor, and hanged from gibbets in Midge Ure Square, where their corpses were pecked at by crows.
Questions:
Hooting Yard on the Air, January the 5th, 2005 : “Me and My Thorn-hog” (starts around 25:30)