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Streamin’ across Dredcrumble Moor o’ nights,
Howlin’ and scratchin’ at the trees. ’Twas awful!”
“Oh, bosh!” says Crumb. “It’s all an old wives’ tale!
“It’s daft.”
“It’s daft.”
“It’s daft.”
“It’s even dafter
Than poor Tom Spratt. Hey, Tom?”
Tom smiles and slobbers.
10.
THE CLUE IN THE BOG
Dredcrumble Moor! Isn’t that where
Young Brian Jumpers wandered off
Without a word? Where Nellie Clough
Took the shortcut to the fair
And disappeared? Where Lady Breedlove
Vanished with her chestnut mare?
Rain freezes on the heather. Fog
Closes like a glove. Police
Shine their torches. The C.I.D.’s
Billingsgate stares at the bog.
The severed hand he thinks he sees
Is just a glove caught on a log.
Beneath it is a torn snapshot,
Poorly focused, of a man
In trilby hat, dark glasses, raincoat.
Billingsgate hands round the snap
Later in the Bell and Anchor:
“Any of you lot know this chap?”
They all deny it in the boozer.
Raincoat, glasses, trilby hat . . .
Doesn’t that description fit
The body found up at the manor?
Wait a tick! This chap was at
The bookstall reading Chips and Whizzer. . . .
What a bloody awful case.
Billingsgate picks at his mutton,
Wishes he could find Bygraves,
Wishes he were home at Luton.
Now he gets some dreadful news:
Lady Madrigal du Bois
Collapsed at noon playing badminton.
11.
ABOUT TOM SPRATT
We wish that he would stop at home
Instead of wandering the streets
Accosting everyone he meets
And babbling nonsense, but that’s Tom.
He’s always setting off alarms
And getting out the fire brigade,
Or pouring ale on someone’s head
Down at the Bell or Chairman’s Arms.
Because he lolls and lollygags,
Because he drops his trousers down,
Because he wears his shirts backwards,
No one suspects he killed the dogs—
And yet, who knows what passions seethe
In Tom Spratt’s breast for Madrigal
(Engaged to Whipsnade, secretly
In love with Geoffrey Smythe-Montcrieff,
That huntsman with his pack of hounds,
Who rides in pinks and sounds his horn).
Tom hunkers down on frosty moms
In thickets while they do their rounds,
Thinking his evil, evil thoughts,
Rolling his eyeballs back to whites.
He haunts Dredcrumble Moor o’ nights
And plots, and plots, and plots, and plots—
He’ll fall into the lake and drown,
Or be sucked down by quicksand, that’s
The way it ends with idiots.
There’s one of them in every town.
12.
THE SAD (BUT REALISTIC) TALE OF BRIAN JUMPERS
Little Brian Jumpers, the main waif in
Little Puddley, pale and sad and sickly,
Little threadbare jacket out at elbow,
Face all tear-streaked, socks around his ankles,
Worked all day at shining shoes and sweeping
Chimneys, blacking things that needed blacking:
Bottles, tar pits, coal cellars, macadam.
Little Brian Jumpers did the awful
Jobs nobody wanted—scrubbing gravestones,
Cleaning loos—all that was wretched, nasty,
Only asking for his tiny pittance.
(No one paid him in the decimal system,
Only in old currency like shillings,
Sixpence, tuppence, bobs, and ha’pennies,
He was saving for his operation.)
Little Brian Jumpers had a boxful
Of treasures found down wells or up in chimneys,
Letters rescued from some burning embers,
Jar of marmalade, a broken locket,
Bloodstained glove he’d found by an old gravestone—
Little Brian knew his solemn duty
Was to take this lot to the police.
Brian walked all night across the moor, but . . .
Little Brian Jumpers never made it.
13.
THE BUDGIE CLUE
Down on the badminton court
They are reviving Madrigal.
Miss Ivers is hysterical;
Whipsnade rubs her ankles while
Snively makes her drink some port.
(Poor Madrigal. It’s rather vile
To have one’s life hang by a thread,
To have to check the post for bombs,
To keep a pistol by one’s bed,
To keep jumping at every sound,
To keep back from the cliff’s sheer edge
To keep from getting shoved or drowned.)
Billingsgate is in the kitchen
With Demelda Sly, the cook:
“What did your mistress have for luncheon?”
“Beef, olives, and spotted dick
For afters.” “Did she ever mention
Anyone about who looked
Anyway the least suspicious?”
“Just Miss Crumb brought up the post,
And Keepyhole brought round the roast,
And Tom Spratt popped up in the bushes,
And Mr. Plum, who happened past—
He’s a salesman, selling budgies.”
The kettle whistles on the hob.
“Mr. Plum? And who is he?”
“Don’t rightly know; he wore a trilby
Hat and raincoat. Quite the nob
Was Mr. Plum. I made some tea
And bought a budgie for ten bob.”
A clue. The caged budgerigar
Puts Billingsgate in mind of—what?
Badminton birds! A poisoned dart
Stuck in the feathers! Fiendish plot!
Where’s Bygraves? wonders Billingsgate.
I’ll get the truth out of this lot!
Meanwhile, Ivers, Whipsnade, Snively
Have been joined by Keepyhole,
Miss Crumb, Tom Spratt and Blind Willie,
And the regulars from the Bell.
Is one of them our “Mr. Plum”?
They all look off. It’s hard to tell.
Whipsnade shouts: “Enough’s enough!”
(What’s wrong with Whipsnade?) “We’ve our rights!
You London chaps have cut up rough!
I’ll have your badge! And Bygraves, what’s
He bloody up to?” Billingsgate,
Sick of Whipsnade, says, “Get stuffed.”
14.
AT THE COBWEB TEAROOMS
Fiona Rugg and Millie Scroggs
Stop for their elevenses
In the Cobweb Tearooms, run
By Mrs. Kingston-Biggs, poor thing,
Whom fortune forced into the trade,
Who once kept servants by the score—
But that’s another story. Now
She serves up set teas and gâteaux.
You’d never know that Rugg and Scroggs,
So friendly-like they seem, quite loathe
One another. Both of them are
In love with Quickly, the chauffeur,
Who’s made rash promises to both.
But worse to come: Fiona’s sure
That Millie found her locket lying
By the broken statue of Eros.
And Millie knows Fiona has
The nega
tives of dirty pictures
Whipsnade took in surgery
That day she weakened, Dreadful man!
You can’t trust no one nowadays!
To think he’s got the sauce to marry
Lady Madrigal du Bois!
Millie searches out the pills
She stole from Whipsnade’s shelf, and when
Fiona leaves to freshen up,
She drops them in Fiona’s cup.
That should take care of you, my girl!
Fiona’s back and watching; while
Millie chats with Kingston-Biggs,
Fiona sprinkles something vile
On Millie’s chocolate gâteaux.
An hour later, feeling sickly,
Each is sure she’ll be the one
To scarper off and marry Quickly.
15.
IN SURGERY
Whipsnade puts the poison up,
Draws the curtains, wipes the knife,
Burns some papers in his safe.
Whipsnade: such a decent chap!
Who would think his plans were for
Getting rid of Smythe-Montcrieff?
Now he leaves and locks the door,
Throws the scalpel and the gun
In the stream by the Old Mill.
Nothing’s left now to be done:
Madrigal has signed her will.
Whipsnade starts. The curtains billow.
What gloved hand lay on the sill?
(This is just one more subplot
To confuse the reader, who’s
Not the fool some think he is.
Whipsnade is that handsome, silky-
Talking, hero-type that’s flat
Out for jewels, or sex, or money.
It was Whipsnade drugged her cocoa,
Cut her reins. But we knew that.)
16.
AT THE POST OFFICE STORES
Miss Crumb, startled by the bell,
Stuffs the bloodstained glove
Dug up from Major Snively’s roses
In the mail receptacle.
Who is this stranger in the raincoat,
Dark glasses, and trilby hat?
Is he the salesman from Godalming?
The road-works man from Aldershot?
Marmaduke, her ginger cat,
A red bandanna round its neck,
Claws the mahogany countertop,
Flings itself upon the floor,
Sniffs the mail receptacle,
Roots through letters, cards, and parcels,
Finds the glove and drags it over
To the stranger in the balaclava.
Marmaduke
Is a nasty bit of work.
17.
LADY WHITSUN DIED
Lady Whitsun died
Holding a carte-de-visite
Of a man in a landscape. Was it
Truly him in the mist
Where hounds had raised a scent
By Snuffling Copse? Just
As he looked in this picture, dressed
In a raincoat and trilby hat,
Handsome, his face in shadow,
Behind him, the long meadow.
Why had he come back now,
After she thought him dead?
How could she face it, how
Explain to police the spreading
Stain on the Axminster carpet?
Or what’s in the potting shed?
Lady Whitsun died
Over her pot of tea
And biscuits and Banbury
Tarts and cyanide.
Wearing her blue peignoir
And clutching to her breast some gray
Letters, ribbon-tied,
Lady Whitsun died.
Weeping, she downed the lot;
The cup, the biscuit unbitten
Dropped from her hand to the floor.
Fog slipped under her door
Like the letter she never got:
Thin, gray, cold, unwritten.
The Middle
18.
MURDERACROSTIC
What’s happened to the Puddley pack?
How could it be they’ve disappeared
And not a horn to call them back
Through copse and comb? It’s as we’ve feared:
Something’s afoot. No one will shout
A view hallo, the whip’s cap up—
Luther, Lisper, Lark, and Luv,
Lurcher leading, steady at banks,
Throwing tongue near Snuffling Copse,
Hounds that used to feather out
Into coverts, rolling up
Scent like reels of silk. Now there’s
Nothing but silence. Hunter, horn
Over a fly country have flown.
Where has it gone, the best of the fun?
19.
MURDERCONCRETE
20.
MURDERANAPHORA
The spectre walks Dredcrumble Moor;
The spectre drifts above the bog;
The spectre floats like frost smoke where
The spectre merges with the fog.
The spectre wanders Crackclaw Heath;
The spectre troubles Fretfall Close;
The spectre moans. What awful death
The spectre suffered, no one knows.
The spectre glides through rain and rime;
The spectre follows kings and fools;
The spectre comes to all in time.
The spectre! How you dread to see
The spectre here, and in dark pools
The spectre mirrored endlessly.
21.
MURDERSONNET
There’s something funny in the potting shed
Besides the smell of damp earth and dead roses—
The windows locked, the door warped shut—it poses
A question of what happened here. What bled
This trail from floor to sill to flower bed?
What scarred the footpath here? What left these traces
Of something dragged across the shasta daisies?
This shrubbery disturbed? These lupins dead?
Old Trev (the gardener), they say, went mad
From witnessing too many wills. He hides
Behind the peonies and stares in windows.
And where’s Lord Whitsun? Something here betides
An ominous outcome—all those petunias
Trampled, and this dreadnought in the zinnias.
22.
MURDERPANTOUM
Down the wrong paths to the wrong answers lie
Clues that are planted to mislead the eye.
On Spectre Hill, a coach is passing by.
It will stop in your courtyard presently.
Clues that are planted to mislead the eye:
The gun, the knife, the bloodstain on the floor.
It will stop in your courtyard presently,
The driver will step down and try your door.
The gun, the knife, the bloodstain on the floor,
They are not what they seem to be at first.
The driver will step down and try your door.
As in an ending cleverly reversed,
They are not what they seem to be at first.
In silence sometimes lies the only hope.
As in an ending cleverly reversed,
Beware. Be still. Be patient. Let him grope.
In silence sometimes lies the only hope.
Some say there is an answer in the sky.
Beware. Be still. Be patient. Let him grope
Down the wrong paths to the wrong answers. Lie.
The End
23.
WHY DON’T WE KILL THEM OFF AND BE DONE WITH IT?
Bobby and Bunch
(The Honorable Smeel-Carruthers twins,
And staples of the Puddley social scene)
Are always turning up at lunch,
Or at hunt breakfasts wearing hacking jackets,
Or suddenly appearing on
; The terrace swinging tennis racquets.
Bobby and Bunch
(Brother and sister—they’ve the same
Blue eyes and flaxen hair and ruddy cheeks)
Say things like “Topping game!”
Or “Stone the crows!” or “Sticky wicket!” or
“I say, you are a brick!”
Or else, “We’re off to London Wednesday week.”
They drink a lot of sherry, tie their sweaters
Around their necks and drive an open car.
And when it rains they stay at Stubbings
(The family seat), or else go slumming
Down at the Bell. One never finds them far
From moneyed uncles, cream teas, and croquet.
Their hobby is brass rubbings.
No matter what
Garrotings, knifings, poisonings, or heads
Stashed in hat boxes under beds
Turn up, or torsos tossed in trunks,
Walks running red with blood, air thick with menace—
Bobby and Bunch
Will unaccountably be playing tennis.
Why must it be these two who find
Lady Whitsun dead? Poor Billingsgate
Is stuck with them: “Now, Mr. Smeel-Carruthers,
And Miss—you didn’t touch
Anything, did you?” “Heavens, no!”
Says Bunch. “At least not much,”
Says Bobby, “nothing but the letters—
“We tossed those in the grate. And scrubbed the stain
Out of the Axminster. And then the cup—
You know—the tea things needed washing up
Straightaway. I had some port and read
A bit whilst Bunch was in the potting shed.”
“The potting shed!”
(Poor Billingsgate.) “What were you doing there?”
“Just having a look round. There’s heaps
Of arsenic and prussic acid, blood
Splashed all about. And then the gardener—”
“Gardener?” “Yes. Dressed in a queer old coat
And balaclava. Well, he’s not our sort
At all. Oh, Bobby, Bobby!
Lord Whitsun’s got a smashing tennis court!”
24.
INTIMATIONS
Rain. Wind. Fog
Like gas above the ground
In Spoorscar Cemetery,
Where the heaped headstones