Posted by HH raises the ghost of Agatha Christie in this tale of mystery and mayhem in a lonely English country house, where sudden death lurks in the cellars and an unknown beast prowls the moors on March 30, 2001 at 15:08:50:
#67: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion World Tour: The Curse of the Blathervilles, or One of the People Gathered Here… is a Murderer.
Chapter One: The Beast of the Blathervilles “Welcome, welcome all of you. Welcome to Blatherville Manor!” “Ms Hastings,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton noted, leaping up from his Chesterfield armchair to greet CSFB!’s mother (by her proper name), “What an unexpected pleasure. I had no idea you were with the party.” “The Beast of Blatherville?” Mrs Random asked in a dramatically-quavery voice, handing Nats, ManMan and Mumphrey comforting fresh cream scones with jam on them. “Back in the old days, they used to say there was a horrible beast that stalked the moors. It followed one of the Blatherville knights back from the Crusades, thirsting for his death and the destruction of all ‘eld dear. At its passing the land became poisoned and barren. Its stench could kill sheep at a dozen yards.” Chapter Two: In the Library with a Dagger “I have my suspicions about Jennings,” Flapjack warned Visionary as the two of them sat in the library of Blatherville Manor. “For a butler he’s awfully unsure about some of the basics.” The Grimpen Mire sucked. It had already sucked one of ManMan’s boots. It also rained. Nats and ManMan were soaked to the skin by the light, persistent drizzle. “I think we’re going round in circles,” Joe Pepper complained. “I think we’re completely lost.” “I don’t think I can wait any longer,” Sir Wesley apologised as Jennings and Mrs Random cleared away the dinner plates and served tea in china cups. “I’m sorry, but I must make my announcement, Mumphrey.” Chapter Three: Rumours, Lies, and Suspicions “I’m worried,” Cheryl admitted. “It’s getting away,” Nats shouted. “After it.” “I’m so sorry,” Viscount Darcy told Amanda Blatherville. “Damn.” Inspector Gallowglass was a troubled man. He had his suspects all gathered together in the library in the hopes of gaining some inspiration. Only Nats and ManMan were missing, having not yet returned from their search of the moors. And that’s where we pause for a while to allow you, the reader, to try and solve the mystery. Join us later this weekend for the solution to our conundrums as the Dark Knight detects, ManMan and Nats battle for their lives, Meggan does relationship counselling, and the killer of Sir Wesley Blatherville is revealed. In the meantime feel free to contribute your comments, theories, and guesses as to whodunnit. I’ll give you this much for free: for once, spiffy wasn’t responsible.
Visionary wasn’t used to people being pleased to see him. “Er, thank you.”
“What he means is it’s a pleasure to be here in your lovely home,” Cheryl covered, shaking the hand of Sir Wesley Blatherville and smiling.
“I’ve heard so much about you all I feel as if I know you already,” Sir Wesley told them.
“You know about us and you still invited us?” Nats checked.
“He knows us from Sir Mumphrey,” ManMan reminded the flying phenomenon. “Mumph is polite even about his deadliest enemies.”
“Especially about his deadliest enemies,” Knifey corrected.
“And how is that cure to world poverty coming on, Mr Visionary?” Sir Wesley asked the possibly fake man.
“And from Asil,” Meggan Foxxx surmised. “He also knows about us from Asil.”
“Come in, come in. Don’t stand here on the portico in that damp moors mist. You must get a hod toddy and meet my neighbour. And of course old Mumph’s been waiting to say hello since first light. Leave your bags. Jennings will bring them up.”
“Oh, that’s alright,” Miss Framlicker said wickedly. “We brought our own porter.”
“Thank you so much,” Flapjack said from under a pile of luggage.
Nats and ManMan paused to look out over the misty health that stretched away from the front of Blatherville Manor. “Well, it looks like the sort of place you might find a monster,” Nats admitted.
“Or a really bad head cold,” ManMan added. “C’mon, let’s get inside.”
“Honey, most of the time I am the party,” Meggan Foxxx grinned. The polite respect of the old English gentleman was a rare pleasure for her. “I was just curious to see how the other half lives is all. The only time I get to rich estates usually is in my film career, and then I usually only see the ceilings.”
“This is hardly a rich estate,” and unpleasant looking man in a cheap city suit interrupted. He was clutching a briefcase. “In fact unless Sir Wesley can come up with the arrears in his mortgage payments by noon tomorrow it won’t be a Blatherville estate at all.” He held out his card. “Snipe. Repossessions.”
“Cut that tick dead,” Mumph advised Meggan. “Damned vulture. Already told Wiggy that he only has to say the word and I’ll write him a cheque but the chap’s too damned proud to take charity.”
“Come and meet young Viscount Darcy,” Sir Wesley, the aforementioned Wiggy, suggested. “Darcy has the estates to the west of here, and a damned fine stable too.”
“And the fact your daughter’s due home today has nothin’ t’do with the fact you’ve invited him over, hmm?” Mumph teased his old friend.
“It’s no secret that I’d like Amanda and Darcy to get together,” Sir Wesley admitted. “But that’s not the reason I asked her to come home. No, that’s for the announcement.”
“Announcement?” Nats asked. “Is that something to do with this mystery you asked us down to investigate?”
“Mystery? Hmm, oh no. That’s just old Mumph being overcautious. Beast of Blatherville indeed. Mediaeval superstition.”
“Visionary!” Asil called out, descending the stairs as quickly as she could. “Cheryl!” She ran down to hug her friends. “I’m so glad you’re here. Now we’ll get to the bottom of this puzzle. All it needed was a Great Brain."
“Perhaps the Great Brain would like to get his pyjamas unpacked and put on his slippers first?” Cheryl suggested tactfully. “It was a long journey from London.”
“Nice to see you again too, young fellah,” Mumphrey told ManMan. “How’s that old Knifey treating you, hmm?”
“He won’t tell me anything about his past.” Joe Pepper complained. Knifey chuckled. “And another thing,” ManMan confided, leaning confidentially in towards the eccentric Englishman, “Ever since we got to Britain, Knifey’s been sounding more… British.”
“Hmm, well, only to be expected given Knifey’s command of languages,” Mumph reasoned.
“No point in being a talking knife if you only talk in one tongue,” Knifey answered smugly.
“What Beast of Blatherville?” Miss Framlicker demanded of Nats. “A quiet weekend in the country away from having to add more pain wands to Goldeneyed’s bus control chair, you said.”
“Well, a quiet weekend for you, obviously,” Bill Reed (Nats) agreed hurriedly. “It’s only the Lair Legion that are here to check out a local… anomaly.”
“If it’s local legends you want, talk to Mrs Random the housekeeper,” Sir Wesley advised. “She knows all the ghost stories and fairy tales right back to the time when old Sir Nigel was supposed to have slain the terrible Beastie.”
“Don’t be so quick to scoff, Sir Wesley,” Viscount Darcy warned him. “Something is out there on the moors. Nobody imagined my finest hunting hounds being charred to death.”
“Charred… to death,” repeated ManMan.
“What a marvellous holiday spot you have brought me to,” Miss Framlicker glared at Nats.
“Sounds like Flapjack’s socks,” Nats admitted. “So what happened? In legend, I mean?”
“A knight in shining armour, Sir Nigel of Wonkham, came along and killed it with a special weapon. Stabbed it until it exploded, by all accounts. They found bits of it in three counties.”
“Jolly good show,” approved Mumph.
“What kind of special weapon?” ManMan asked with professional interest.
Mrs Random lowered her voice. “I’ll show you,” she whispered. She led the two adventurers into the library and pointed to a glass cabinet. “There,” she said with reverence.”
Nats and ManMan looked with blank expressions at a tapering cylinder of ancient cork some six inches in diameter at its thickest and a foot long.
“That’s it?” Nats asked sceptically. “Sir Nigel killed it with that?”
“That’s the Blessed Bung of the Blathervilles,” Mrs Random told them proudly.
“Congratulations,” ManMan told Knifey. “You aren’t the lamest legendary weapon on Earth.”
“Thanks,” Knifey replied acidly.
“So how, um, how does it work, actually?” Mumphrey wondered.
“That is lost to the mists of history,” the housekeeper admitted. “But it may be our only hope now the beastie has returned.”
“Yeah, Mumph called us in about this,” ManMan admitted. “You said that poisoned moors sheep and ponies were being found and whole areas of land were scorched and dead?”
“And there have been sightings of a huge quadruped out across the Grimpen Mire,” Mumphrey added. “Young Darcy lost a whole huntin’ pack to the thing.”
“The Blessed Bung knows that the creature is back,” Mrs Random confided. “It can sense it’s old enemy.”
“It’s a piece of wood,” Nats frowned.
“It knows,” Mrs Random insisted. “Every morning when I comes in to dust here these days I finds the Blessed Bung out of its cabinet, over there by the French windows. Like it was searching for its old foe.”
“What do you mean?” Vizh asked.
“Well, for example, he doesn’t know what Eniru is,” the hunchbacked servant explained.
“Ah,” Visionary answered, none the wiser. “I see.”
Flapjack rolled his eyes. “In a certain type of country house, the lord of the manor got a bit fed up with the servants pinching the good brandy and stuff, so he tried to fool them by the simple ploy of printing the names of the spirits backwards on the bottles. Hctocs, Yksihw, Trop,” that sort of thing. The idea was that the domestics would be too dumb to read the labels backwards.”
“Okay,” Visionary shrugged. “What about the Eniru?”
“That was what the servants topped the bottles up with after they’d drunk from them,” Flapjack smirked. “But Jennings didn’t know that.”
“And I should worry about that?” asked the possibly fake man weakly.
Asil burst into the room. “Visionary, are you coming?” she bounced. “Sir Wesley’s daughter is here!”
Meggan Foxxx was less excited and more practical. “And she’s not alone,” she noted.
The entertainment was proceeding down in the main hall. “But daddy, I love him!” Amanda Blatherville was protesting. “He’s here as my guest.”
That?” Sir Wesley was fulminating, pointing at a long-haired youth in a duffel coat with CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) stickers on it. “That damned communist hunt saboteur.”
“Sure I’d stop a pack of dogs ripping a helpless terrified fox to pieces if I could,” Jerry Cuswirth argued.
That caught Viscount Darcy’s attention. “Even with a flame thrower?” he challenged. “Where were you last Thursday?”
“Daddy, either he stays or I go. If you want me here for your grand announcement then Jerry will be around as well.”
“This is kind of like when Troia took you to see her dad,” Knifey recalled to Joe Pepper, “Except that so far old Wesley hasn’t exiled his daughter’s boyfriend to a hostile parallel universe.”
“Only because he hasn’t the means,” ManMan surmised. “He might possibly explode though.”
“Let the young man stay, Sir Wesley,” Mr Snipe advised. “It’ll probably be his last chance to see the place.”
Mrs Random interrupted the drama. “Lunch is served.”
“We are not going round in circles,” answered Nats. “When you work long enough for the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation you get a really good sense of direction. I’d say we’ve gone more in a kind of oval shape.”
“Well I’m taking a break anyway,” announced ManMan, sitting down on a damp rock. “I’m going to have this packed lunch that Mrs Random prepared for me.”
Nats took his share of the wet sandwich and shuddered. “Only a nation this old could come up with something so horrible to do to a simple cheese and ham on white,” he complained. “What is this smelly brown stuff?”
“Pickle,” Knifey replied, chuckling. Then again, he didn’t have to eat it.
“Do you know the way back to the house, Nats?” ManMan worried.
“Almost,” munched the flying phenomenon, comfortingly. “All we have to do is look for those mysterious scorched areas again, where nothing would grow.”
“We should be able to smell them out,” Joe Pepper agreed. “They smelled worse than the pickle. Just.”
“I don’t understand what could kill that vegetation so dead,” Bill Reed admitted. “It was as if it had been napalmed or something. Just like Viscount Darcy described happening to his dogs.”
“Almost like the breath of a dragon,” ManMan noted, “but there is only one living dragon now, isn’t there?”
“Fin Fang Foom is a Makluan dragon, an alien,” Knifey pointed out, “Who knows about the indigenous draconiforms these days? Er, not that I knew anything about them in the old days either. No, sir.”
“It couldn’t be a dragon,” Nats decided. “Not in this day and age.”
That was when he felt the warm breath on the back of his neck.
“Quite alright, old chap,” Mumphrey assured him. “I’m sure ManMan and Nats’ll understand.
“I hope they’re alright out there on the moors in the darkness,” Meggan Foxxx worried. “I hear there are sinkholes and sucking pits and all kinds of unpleasant things.”
“Hunt saboteurs for example,” Viscount Darcy suggested, glaring over the table at Jerry Cuswirth.
“It’s just like Nats to be late for an important occasion,” Miss Framlicker noted.
“They’ll be fine,” Mumphrey assured the folks at dinner. “Knifey’s had a lot of experience at getting his wielders out of trouble.”
“And now that Visionary is back as leader of the Lair Legion everything will be just fine,” Asil asserted.
“Er, I’m not actually…”
“Not actually real?” Miss Framlicker wondered with interest.
“Not actually their leader,” Visionary answered stiffly. And shuddered.
“You are naturally the leader wherever you go,” Asil assured her Great Man.
“Perhaps now would be a good time for your announcement after all,” Cheryl suggested tactfully.
“Well strangely, my little announcement might be able to determine your husband’s realness once and for all,” Sir Wesley Blatherville promised. He dabbed his lips with his napkin, rose, and led his guests to the library. “Some of you might know that I’m not really an idle landowner,” he said, with a glare at Jerry. “I do a little scientific pottering on behalf of the Government. Genetic research and whatnot. Well it appears I’ve gone and had a bit of a breakthrough.”
“Oh,” Mumphrey said. “Jolly good show.”
“Something valuable?” Mr Snipe anticipated.
“Something dangerous?” worried Visionary.
Sir Wesley gestured for his daughter to go to a certain bookshelf and pull a certain book. The secret door slid open to reveal a modern elevator. “If you’d all just care to step down into my lab,” he suggested, “I’ll show you what I mean. Um, I’m afraid the lift isn’t big enough to fit us all in in one go.”
Cheryl, Visionary, Mumphrey, Asil, Mr Snipe and Viscount Darcy crowded into the lift with Sir Wesley and Jennings. The butler pushed the button and the car began to descend.
Then the lights went out, just for a moment.
When the neon strip flickered back into life Sir Wesley was dead, a steak-knife from the dinner table stabbed through his heart.
Visionary glanced at her with a hurt expression. It was Visionary’s job to be worried and Cheryl’s to be calmly and reassuringly competent as she solved the problem. That was the way of the world. “That Inspector Gallowglass from Scotland Yard seems remarkably competent,” the fake man assured her. “Although some of the questions he asked me seemed a bit personal. I’m real, dammit.”
“I’m worried because Miss Framlicker whipped out her interdimensional ether flux sensor and determined that nobody teleported or dimension-travelled or time-jumped into the elevator car when Blatherville was killed,” the Duchess of Lake Superior explained. “That means that one of the people present has to be the murderer.”
“Well I was sort of warned about Jennings,” Vizh admitted.
“What, that he was a British Intelligence Security Man working undercover to protect Sir Wesley?” Cheryl checked.
“Er, yeah,” the possibly fake man faked it. “Well Snipe has a motive as well. He might have really wanted to stop Sir Wesley’s announcement if it meant his firm couldn’t repossess the estate.”
“Gallowglass couldn’t find prints on the steak knife,” Cheryl reported. “It was wrapped in a table napkin.”
“Perhaps we could get Knifey to interview it?” Vizh asked confusedly. “Er, where are ManMan and Nats anyway?”
“I say let it get away,” ManMan answered, pulling himself out of the mud hole he had leaped into when the vast creature had loomed out of the fog. “I say let’s head back to, oh, I don’t know, say Paradopolis, get Donar, Enty, Finny, G-Eyed, Exile, Hatty, and Donar again and come back to chase it then.”
“C’mon!” Nats urged, flying through the mist after the retreating creature.
ManMan glared at Knifey. “You couldn’t bestow the power of flight, could you? Oh no. Super-powerful grip. Thanks so much.”
“With great power comes great responsibility,” the sentient blade answered. “You couldn’t handle it.”
Before Joe Pepper could reply there was a burst of flame, an explosion, and Nats was swatted from the sky like an insect.
“Are you?” Jerry Cuswirth challenged. “Only you have the neighbouring estate, don’t you? And since you’ve just found out that little Mandy’s not up for grabs your only other chance at getting these lands would be if you stopped old Blatherville from getting his house out of hock after his mysterious announcement.”
Amanda looked up sharply. “Would you buy Blatherville Manor if it came on the market, Darcy?”
“I can’t comment on any potential buyers of your father’s estate,” interjected Mr Snipe.
“His estate,” Asil frowned. “That includes all his property and any scientific breakthrough he may have come up with, doesn’t it?”
“Whatever is in that laboratory safe,” Meggan Foxxx noted.
“We’d better check what’s in there,” decided Inspector Gallowglass. “Miss Blatherville, do you know the combination?”
“I do,” Mrs Random admitted. “For dusting purposes.”
“I think we’d all better go together,” Jennings suggested. “There are too may strange coincidences about all of this. Safety in numbers.”
“What do you mean?” Asil asked.
“He means it all happened so quickly,” Miss Framlicker noted. “The lights were only out for a few moments, but in that time Sir Wesley was killed. Who turned out the lights to make the murder possible? And why do the killing now, just before Sir Wesley’s mysterious announcement?”
The group avoided the cordoned-off bloodstained library elevator and used the service stairs. They found Sir Mumphrey Wilton already in the lab.
Mrs Random dialled the combination and opened the safe. It was empty.
“The discovery!” Amanda wailed. “Whatever father was going to announce! It’s gone!”
Asil leaned towards Mumphrey. “You didn’t use your temporal pocketwatch to phase the safe door into the future and get the discovery out did you?”
“Phased the door, m’dear,” Mumph admitted to her quietly, “but the cupboard was bare.”
Asil’s usual absolute confidence in Mumphrey was shaken when she remembered that the old English gentleman had also once been an operative of British Intelligence.
“So the secret whatever-it-was is gone too,” frowned Meggan. “Anything else missing?”
“Nothing immediately obvious,” answered Viscount Darcy. Amanda agreed.
It was only later that Mrs Random noticed that the Blessed Bung of the Blathervilles was missing from its case.
“They’re superheroes,” Asil protested. “How much trouble can they get into?”
Visionary winced.
“I’ve been assessing methods and motives,” the Inspector reported. “Let me see if I’ve got this right. All of you were at the dinner table except Mrs Random and Jennings, who served. So any of you could have palmed the knife and napkin, both of which were from Ms Foxxx’s place-setting.”
“You’ll never take me alive, copper,” Meggan told him with a tight smile.
“When the lights went out, Miss Blatherville, Mr Cuswirth, Miss Framlicker, and Ms Foxxx were all together in the library waiting for the lift car. Mr and Mrs, uh, Visionary, Viscount Darcy, Sir Mumphrey, Miss Ashling, Mr Snipe, and Jennings were all in the lift itself with Sir Wesley. Where were you, Mrs Random?”
“I was putting away the cheese board, Inspector,” the housekeeper explained.
“And you, Mr Flapjack?”
“I was lurking,” the hunchbacked retainer admitted. “It’s a hobby.”
“As for motives, Amanda might have resented her father’s attitude to Mr Cuswirth, or Cuswirth might have felt Sir Wesley was getting in the way of his relationship with his daughter,” the inspector continued, ignoring the indignant protests of the young lovers. Viscount Darcy might have had a land-gaining motive. Jennings might have had a national security motive – don’t deny it Jennings I can spot a Special Branch a mile off. I wasn’t born yesterday. Mr Visionary might have felt threatened by whatever Sir Wesley felt his discovery could tell about him.”
“Visionary would never harm anyone,” Asil protested.
“But you might, to protect him,” Meggan didn’t say out loud.
“And Snipe might have had financial reasons for not wanting Sir Wesley to make good on whatever discovery he was about to announce,” Gallowglass concluded.
“There is also the question of the missing documents from the safe, and of the stolen Bung,” Sir Mumphrey suggested. “Only Mrs Random and Miss Blatherville appear to know the combination. But neither of them was there when poor Wiggy was murdered.”
Silence descended upon the room.
“Well, this is a pretty pickle,” the Inspector admitted, sipping his tea. “I must admit to being a bit baffled.”
“No,” Flapjack contradicted him. “I’d say it is all remarkably simple now.” The hunchback straightened up, suddenly seeming to become taller and thinner and somehow more sinister. He reached to his neck and peeled back the rubberised face mask that had concealed his true identity.
“Dark Knight!” Asil squealed.
“I thought it best to come in undercover,” DK told the assembly. “Now I have made my observations and drawn my conclusions. I know what is going on in Blatherville Manor. I know who has the missing discovery know why the Blessed Bung was stolen. I know who killed Sir Wesley and how. I know who is behind all of this. And I can surmise what kind of beast stalks the Grimpen Mire.”
There was a dramatic pause and he told them the answer.
Then the mystery villain attacked.