Author: Alexander Fawn

The woman at number fourteen was cooking dinner when the phone rang. She looked at the clock, wondering who could be calling at such a time. She felt she had to answer it as her cousin was recently killed in a road accident and she knew that relatives were still grieving. She wiped her hands on her apron and picked up the phone. She said, “Hello?”

She heard, “Hello”, then there was a pause on the line.

“Hello,” she repeated. “Who is this?”

“Ah! Yes. Hello, I do hope this isn’t an inconvenient time for you.”

The woman didn’t reply.

“Yes, well, I’m the lady from number-twenty-seven. You may have seen our Winnebago on the front lawn. Anyway, our son recently lost his pet guinea pig. You’ve probably seen the posters he put up all over town. As you can imagine, he was terribly fond of little Squeaky, his pet name for it, and he has recently been told about something I feel I need to talk to you about. Somebody said they thought you and your husband came here from Paucartambo, I hope I got the spelling right. Looking it up in Google maps I see that it’s a town in Southern Peru. I, we, my son, husband and I, we also discovered that Peruvians actually eat guinea pigs and consider them a delicacy. In fact, our neighbour from across the road in twenty-six, b says that Peruvians consume something like sixty-five million guinea pigs a year…

The woman at number fourteen put the phone down gently.

What she whispered to herself as she returned to the kitchen would have embarrassed a Croatian construction worker.

It was the recent incident during their geography class that had him working on a code.

Note-passing was common practice among the pupils. It all came about when their teacher had stood on a chair to take down a large atlas, showing just how broad her hips actually where. That’s when his friend on the desk behind tapped him on the shoulder and passed the note. The truth is, if he hadn’t sniggered, and had the note not got passed around, nothing would have come of it. As it was, she became aware of all the commotion and giggling, she seized the note and read it for herself.

What followed was very unpleasant, with her trying to find out who actually wrote it. There were threats of a visit to the principal’s office and possible expulsion. Naturally, she never got to the bottom of it, no pun intended, but it did leave everybody rattled. That’s when he started to work on his code. It had to be something they could all use to keep their messages private. He felt himself to be more than competent in the business of creating something robust; something unbreakable.

It was a couple of nights later, at his home, that he and his friend from the desk behind sat looking at what he had come up with so far.

“It has to be robust,” he was saying, as he spread several sheets of paper out across his bedroom floor. “I started by finding a word that would be the key word to base the code on.”

“Key word?” asked his friend.

“Yes. That’s the word, the secret word if you like, that you need to know in order to read the message.”

“OK. Did you find one?”

“I did.”

“Wow! Go on.”

“I didn’t want it to contain too many letters, which would only make it unnecessarily complicated, no more than ten. After all, even ten is almost half of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. Also, I had to find a word of that length where none of the letters were repeated.”

“And you found one, you say?”

“Yes. Guilderton.”

“What’s that?”

“Not what… where. It’s a place name. Found it in the class notes. It’s a small town on the west coast of Australia.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Gee! You really have put a lot of work in on this. It’s going to be great!”

“I hope so. The next step was to assign numbers to each letter. Each of these letters is represented by a number from one to twenty-six. Here’s the chart I made.”

At this point he produced a printout and they both studied it.

“Wow! Looks good.”

“Thanks. Anyway, at first, I thought I would convert the ten numbers 4, 5, 7, 9, 12, 14, 15, 18, 20 and 21. These being the letters used to make the key word, then put the letters down in the order originally shown in the alphabet. This gave me the word ‘degilnortu’. I wasn’t happy with that.”

His friend shrugged and said, “No.”

“No. What I did was add all ten numbers up. This gave me 125. Then, I divided this number by the number of letters; ten. Unfortunately, the result was 12.5.”

At this point his friend frowned. “I can’t see how that helps.”

“It doesn’t.”

“OK. What do we do then?”

“Ah!” he said, thinking hard. “I think we should be more careful about writing notes.”

He zoomed off, leaving her alone on the park bench.

She knew this was final. She sat crying for a while. A good cry never did anybody any harm, her mother used to say. They’d been together since their school days, but it had always been the case that they wanted different things from life. In spite of her grief, they both agreed that the breakup was inevitable. She wanted to marry, have children and settle down. All perfectly natural things to crave for, she thought. Her parents had said from the start that they’d help with the money to get them started. She had even talked him into looking at show homes and houses from time to time, but it was obvious that his heart just wasn’t in it.

All he really cared about was his electric scooter.

He switched the TV on and settled into his armchair.

He’d been looking forward to catching up with the show all week. Thumbing through the magazine, he made sure that he had the time and the channel right. He sat back and waited. The minutes ticked away slowly before the programme’s title came up. Not long now, he thought, with a sense of growing anticipation.

Finally, the show started and he began watching the clock. He waited for the ad to come on, the one where his ex-wife smiled into the camera, wearing the latest and greatest eyeshadow. His patience was rewarded when the advertisement started. He stood, picking up the loaded gun. He waited for the final big close up. He took careful aim and shot her between the eyes.

The TV exploded!

Listen to them in the night,

Telling you how you should feel.

A one way heart-to-heart talk,

With nothing really real.

–

An echo from some capriccio,

Playing in your head.

Then, fleeting voices barely heard,

A search for meaning instead.

–

A jumble of notions from the day.

Images and sounds abound.

Some feckless, lacking theme,

Some valid and profound.

Maybe a movie or a parade,

That has these images floating by.

Loved ones appearing, then fading.

Returning by-and-by.

–

Imagining by sound and sight,

Whether causing joy or fright;

A stranger’s frown,

A sorrow to drown,

A ride through town,

A scholar of renown,

A crying clown,

A toppled crown,

A bloodstained gown,

A light pole down…

Just whispers in the night.

The joy of a quiet time.

In a gallery, moving alone,

Staring silently at where shadows fall.

While those around also follow their taste,

Taking in the work of others; choosing where to dwell.

Admiring those with palette and brush;

Those strangers that have mixed beads of oil into colours, light and dark.

These great masters creating beauty and form.

Renaissance art, still aging.

–

This visitor, concentrating on rural scenes, often lacking figures.

Looking beyond, at what nature offers.

A blur of ancient mist, odd patches of half-hidden sky, an unexpected wisp of smoke.

And yet, with the occasional ornateness of a frame catching the eye.

Such distractions being fleeting reminders of times passed,

With this great gathering of revered masterpieces.

–

A merger of the material and the aesthetic.

All somehow verging on the spiritual.

Ah! The pure joy of it.

Staring silently at where shadows fall.

He sat looking at the medical report while the kettle boiled.

He’d been back at the doctor’s that morning to get his test results. It had been a shock. Now, perched at the kitchen table, he went over the information and thought about what he’d been told. He had been given a month, maybe five weeks at the most. Now, he had to think about what he would do with the remaining time that was allotted to him. He thought about the life he’d lived. What had he achieved? He made himself a cup of tea and took it into the lounge. He sat down in his favourite armchair and continued to think about his future. A future that would only span a few weeks.

He thought about his brother and how they had fallen out. They had not spoken for such a long time. He could make amends by getting in touch. He could apologise for his part in the disagreement. Then, there were others. People he had wronged in one way or another. If he were honest, they would be hard to count.

He thought about the life he’d lived. He wondered if he had really achieved anything. Could he have been a better person?

After a while, positive thoughts began to swirl around his head.

His brain began to clear.

Five weeks at the most wasn’t long, but…

If he was careful with his planning, he could rob another bank!

It was late and she’d been walking home when it happened.

She had just finished another overtime shift at the cannery and was feeling really tired. She wondered whether this kind of work was really suitable for a middle-aged woman to be doing. But then, she had often questioned this, and never got an answer. She had just turned into her street when she caught sight of a young woman standing with her back against a hedge, wiping her face with a tissue. She had obviously been sobbing. She didn’t recognise her, but slowed a little to make sure she was all right. The woman came forward a step.

In a shaky voice, she said, “I’m sorry, I must look pretty silly standing here like this, I’ve just had what was easily the worst day of my life and just needed to… you know, get out and just wander around for a while.” She shook her head with a nervous grin. “It’s OK, I don’t expect you to understand.”

The older woman smiled. “I do understand, dear. Don’t you worry about that. Is there anything I can do for you?”

The woman stepped forward a few paces. With tears still running down her face, she asked, with a sheepish voice, “A hug would be nice.”

So, in a quite unforeseen gesture on both their parts, for a few long moments, the two women stood there in a mutual embrace. For that brief time, neither gave any thought to what brought about what was an obvious cognizance.

The young woman stood back, and with a soft laugh she said, “Thank you.”

She turned and walked slowly back towards the town.

At times life becomes busy,

Requiring a retreat from humanity,

With a need for time out to reset

To an appropriate level of sanity.

–

Chaos is all very well.

It can bring a much needed churning,

And bring into relief,

Albeit quite brief,

A level of shrewd discerning.

–

By freely giving the time,

Gives results that easily exceed.

It’s not about when,

Or the prompts now and then,

But recognising the need.

The woman in the expensive ball gown was found lying at the edge of the field.

She had been dead for several hours, undetected, until a farm worker taking a short-cut to work in the early hours spotted her. Local police attended and made their reports, followed by a call to a detective working in homicide. Although he attended the scene promptly, his investigation had been very slow and drawn out. So much so that the chief constable called him in for a debriefing.

The investigator began. “It’s a complex case sir, not just a simple murder. I’ve been working on it for several weeks now. Anyway, this is what I’ve got so far.”

He opened his notebook.

“It was a local man who found the body. His name’s Jack and being a nimble fellow quickly ran to the farm and called the police. I’ve ruled him out. The farm itself is managed by old MacDonald, but it’s actually owned by the grand old Duke of York.”

Turning pages, he went on.

“Anyway, the day before the crime was committed, up at the farm, Polly, the owner’s daughter, was putting the kettle on when she heard little Boy Blue blowing his horn. When she went to the window and looked out she saw Jack and Jill climbing the hill. When I interviewed these two they said that a rumour was going around that Mr King, a wealthy man who lives just outside the village, who apparently spends most of his time in his counting house counting out his money, had given his son permission to look for the girl he had danced with at a recent ball.”

More page turning.

“Making further enquiries, I found out that the son, nick-named ‘prince’, had a slipper, and using a significant amount of his father’s generous allowance, was going around trying to find a foot that it would fit.” He looked up from his notes and shrugged. “Meanwhile,” he went on, “we had an informer come into the station. His name was Jack Horner, the young apprentice to the village cobbler. It seems he was sitting in the corner unnoticed, when a woman came in and made arrangements for his employer to make a slipper, like the one that the so-called ‘prince’ was taking around, but one that would comfortably fit her own foot.”

At this point he let out a sigh and said, “It just so happens that Jack is good friends with a boy called Peter, often referred to as the pumpkin eater, who is this woman’s younger brother. It followed that the story about the boy’s scheming sister and her apparent attempt to falsely claim the shoe as her own, spread quickly. Well, eventually, word of all this reached the ears of Miss Muffet, the close friend of a scullery maid, named Cinderella, who also worked at the farm. As soon as she finished eating her cereal, she confided in the one person she could trust, Mary, a close school friend that had a pet lamb. As far as we can make out, these two, the Muffet girl and the scullery maid, definitely had a strong motive to stop the pumpkin eater’s older sister, Cruella, from taking the scullery maid’s place. As a result, we do know that Cruella hired the ball gown to strengthen her claim, and that it was, in fact, her body that was found in the field.”

He closed his notebook.

“The problem is that both Cinderella and Miss Muffet have strong alibis for the time of the murder.”

The chief constable asked, “Any other suspects?”

The detective flipped through his notes again.

“There was a little girl…”

“Go on.”

“Well, she had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. I mean, she was really cute. Anyway, we found out that she’d had a crush on this ‘prince’ lad for some time.”

“So, could there be some jealousy angle here?”

“Maybe. I mean, to look at her you would say she was the picture of innocence, but…”

“But?”

“I know that listening to gossip is not the best way to run an investigation, but a number of people questioned came up with the same comments about her.”

“Which were?”

“Well, the general consensus was that when she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad she was horrid.”

The senior policeman slapped his knee and said, “Bring her in!”