Monday, February the 20th, 2006
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The Immense Duckpond Pamphlet, episode twenty one
“I shall soon be in a position to make an arrest,” growled Detective Captain Unstrebnodtalb at breakfast the next morning. Hummingbirds revolved around his head. The scullery had been all but obliterated during the master detective's frenzied arrival, and for their breakfast soup the relevant characters had gathered in the stinking yard.
Late the previous night, as the moon shimmered in the black sky, Unstrebnodtalb had come upon Doctor Cack's corpse. Using detection magnets, and guided by his bat-like inner radar, it had taken him just minutes to pin-point the whereabouts of the dead potato scientist. His immediate diagnosis was that Doctor Cack had been slain with a whelk, a battery, and a puddle of bleach. Further than that he would not go, for the time being. The mysterious presence of ironmongery escaped his notice.
His confidence at breakfast astonished even Euwige. “You know who did the deed?” she screeched.
“Let me say this,” howled Unstrebnodtalb, shovelling small insects down his gullet and uprooting titanic cedars* from the mud, “I delay only so that I can compare notes with my esteemed colleague, the sleuth Aminadab. He may be in possession of facts material to this foul deed, of information to which I am not privy despite my genius. His methods are obscure, but unfailing in their accuracy. The sleuth Aminadab always carries with him, in either his satchel or his reticule, a small rectangular tin filled with pastilles of a bauxite-like substance which is not actually bauxite itself. He carries, too, a portable kiln. Ignited with a simple household match, the kiln is coated on the inside with a fuel which produces a temperature of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit within two seconds of being lit. It is most uncanny, but I have witnessed this happen with my own eyes. Or rather, eye. Into this tiny furnace, Aminadab places one of his non-bauxite pastilles, using a long, thin pair of tongs which he carries about with him in a special compartment sewn into one leg of his pantaloons. He is a resourceful fellow, the sleuth Aminadab. Ten hours later, when the kiln has cooled, he prises open its tiny hatch, extracts the charred remains of the pastille, and smears it in his hair and upon his brow. Then he packs up the portable kiln, after applying a fresh coating of his inexplicable fuel, replaces it in his reticule or satchel, and goes about his business.”Detective Captain Unstrebnodtalb stopped howling, and beat his fists on the table, smashing it to pieces.
“And how does this help him solve the case?” asked the languid Jubble. Unstrebnodtalb sank his fangs into a passing horse before responding.
“It has nothing to do with the deductive abilities of the sleuth Aminadab,” he roared, “I merely wished to entertain you at breakfast with an anecdote about his untoward personal habits.”
It began to rain.
*NOTE : Here is a curious thing. The phrase “titanic cedars” appears here as it did in the original version of The Immense Duckpond Pamphlet (1990). A few years earlier, another out of print pamphlet of mine, A Zest For Crumpled Things (1987), featured a character named Violet Ebbing. I was disconcerted to stumble upon both “titanic cedars” and “Violet Ebbing” when, some time in the mid-nineties, I read Ronald Firbank. They both turn up in, I think, Valmouth (1919), which I had never read before. Spooky.