~~~The Velvet Puffin Mysteries~~~
The Skipton Custard Murders
Well, take it from me, there's times when life in a Portakabin can get a little tiresome. There's only so many games of Whist and dips in the paddling pool you can take until it gets a little grating, rather like the small trellis next to the entrance.
I do apologise.
So to pep myself up, there's a few mental exercises I like to indulge myself in, one being 'Count The Amount Of Stains You Can See At Any Given Time'. This provides literally hours of mirth and merriment, and I would even go so far as to say it could cure a number of diseases (but not thrush, that's yoghurt you're after) (not sure if Yakult works, or any of the other drink-based yoghurts, although I suppose that's 'Good Bacteria', as opposed to 'Bad Bacteria', or indeed, 'Mildly Peeved Bacteria', or even, 'Somewhat Miffed Bacteria').
I am also tracking down the culprit of the pernicious Skipton Custard Murders that took place last January, with no suspect ever found. I believe this to be the work of the pernicious Martin Johnson, otherwise known as The Man Who Lives In A Barrel. Martin was the prime suspect of The Velvet Puffin Mysteries, but escaped on appeal following the damning outcome that a custard-stained breezeblock laying next to his barrel was not enough evidence to lay the finger of blame upon him.
The following excerpts are from my casebook, tracing the case in detail.
Ken�s Casebook - Tuesday June 22, 2004
I've managed to further my inroads and in fact inlaws into the nefarious Skipton Custard Murders. Returning to the scene of the final crime, the drowning of Ms Betty Thrimble of no fixed doorhandle in a duck pond filled with custard, I was approached by a bizarrely clad gentleman, so I slapped him. Turns out he was what they call in polite society, 'A Vicar'. When I eventually picked him up and dusted him off, after putting the boot in a few times, we laughed heartily at my simple, yet glaring mistake and went back to his cottage for some tea.
He didn't have any tea, so we each had a can of Fanta instead. We chatted for a while about the finer points of Pre-Raphaelite Art, the possibilities of the existence of the City of Atlantis, and our favourite member of Blue, over the Fanta, until I said something which made him freeze in fear. It was the word, "Kettle". Or it could've been, "Pelmet", I can't quite remember. He froze, nevertheless, and I could see a harrowed, sullen, otherworldly veil come over him, something like a dirtcloth over a wheelbarrow (one for the wheelbarrow fans there!). There was a glint in his eye, a dark glint that told me he had seen something that he dare not speak of. I asked him what it was. He didn't dare speak of it. So I smacked him again and the big baby fessed up like a great big, stupid, blubbering weakling. He told me he had been near to the duck pond at the time of the murder, and had seen a sight that would chill me to the very bone. It was semi-darkness, or "twilight" as he called it, so visibility was not clear, but trudging through the gloaming was a ghastly silhouette - the silhouette of a puffin.
I stopped him fast. This could well be the key to the entire Skipton Custard Murders business. I said I had to leave and made my excuses, but as I did so, I glanced into the Vicar's kitchen and noticed a small globule of Strawberry Angel Delight(TM) on the dresser.
The custard thickens...
Ken�s Casebook - Wednesday June 23, 2004
No further developments on the Skipton Custard Murders, I've been fixing the boiler.
Ken�s Casebook - Saturday June 26, 2004
Woah Nelly! As it stands, and indeed stinds, I am still being tracked down by Tommy Lee Jones and his vicious police squad, and am getting somewhat tired of having to constantly be on the lookout for snoops and snitches. The world would be a far better place without them, I can tell you. The snoops are alright, it's just the snitches I can't stand. They really do get on my wick, the snitchy buggers!
I have been following up my leads on the Skipton Custard Murder investigations, ironically none of which have led to a lead mill in Leeds. So, after rummaging for clues around the duckpond and down by the bottlebank, all to no avail, I looked further afield, but I kept coming up against brick walls, which is a criminal offence in a lot of places, but not Skipton. It was after my twenty eighth wall come-uppance that I decided to get in touch with Skipton's wisest man, Wise Craig.
Wise Craig bears a haunting demeanour, with his coal-like eyes, his beefburger-like lips, his ears that resemble two upturned canoes, and for some reason some plate fungus on his left elbow. He also has an enormous crusty bogey that is about twenty-eight miles across that resembles the face of TV jockey pundit John McCruik up his nose, but I didn't like to say anything. Unfortunately, for him and others, Wise Craig is crippled from the waist upwards, but there is no doubting that he is indeed the wisest man in Skipton, otherwise it'd be pretty stupid having a name like 'Wise Craig', wouldn't it? Wise Craig's only companion is a small stickleback which he keeps in a pint-pot on top of the telly, named Cuthbert (the stickleback, not the telly).
I sat down with Wise Craig on the velour sofa in his run-down shack and we chatted about the nature of truth in eighteenth century metaphysical poetry, the possibilities of travelling far distances in outer-space via worm-holes, and who our favourite member of Blazing Squad was, which all in all was a pretty big achievement considering that he's crippled from the waist upwards. He manages to converse by doing sign-language with his feet, you see. It all makes sense if you think about it.
I then happened to broach the subject of the Skipton Custard murders. Wise Craig fell silent. Well, his feet stopped twitching, at any rate. All that could be heard was a "gloop" from Cuthbert. Then Wise Craig gave me possibly the wisest piece of advice that I have ever been given. He coolly and carefully foot-signed, "Why don't you just ask the main suspect, Martin Johnson who lives in a barrel, if he did it?" This I decided, after not much deliberation and speculation, to do.
I arrived at Martin Johnson's barrel in the middle of a thunderstorm (I was in the middle of the thunderstorm, not the barrel. Well, it was, but not in that way). There was something strange in the air. It was an airship in the shape of a ferret. I glanced upwards as lightning struck close by. Seated at the helm of the airship was Tommy Lee Jones - it was an ambush! That Wise Craig had set me up! The heat was on, and I was the one paying the excess gas bill. Another lightning bolt burst across the horizon, splintering the sky with its jagged spikes. From what seemed like it was out of nowhere, but was probably just from round the corner, came a squad of heavily armoured police officers, all tooled up to the teeth, and they had pretty horrible teeth too!
I wasn't going to hang about, but I was surrounded, so I had do some quick thinking. Fortunately I'd been canny enough to bring along my Lunchbox of Delights, which is always useful in tricky situations such as this one. I reached gingerly inside the lunchbox, fumbled about a bit, and then my hand came into contact with just the thing, my patented Mustard-o-Matic Grapple-Hook Gun, which I ker-chinged into the armpit of the gargoyle on the roof of the town hall and whirrred myself stringwards to safety. The cops were still in hot pursuit, but I managed to make it down to the quayside, where I made good my escape on a stolen gondola, punting frantically down the Skipton ship and gondola canals whilst licking a Cornetto ice-cream and yodelling light operetta to the tune of Hawaii 5-O as I did so.
I then went back to my Portakabin and played Edwin the Creamy Gremlin at Halo on X-Box. It were brill. I won! But the real victory was yet to come...
Ken�s Casebook - Tuesday July 6, 2004
The pressure was on, I was having steamed vegetables. After wolfing down the vegetables, which were very nice, if a tad on the steamed side, I looked back at all the information I'd already witnessed. The Vicar, the Strawberry Angel Delight(TM), the puffin silhouette, Wise Craig's double-cross, the duckpond full of custard. Where did it all stem from? What could it all possibly mean? Then it hit me like a misplaced bowling ball falling off the top shelf of an airing cupboard. I'd been looking where they expected me to look! I should have been doing things the other way round. I had to take the initiative, perhaps via the help of a mind map.
I eventually realised that this was a matter of trust and mistrust, of distinguishing between custard and other sugar-sweet desserts. The Vicar had a vested interest in protecting the murderer, of that I was certain. The puffin silhouette had to be a distraction - HE was the puffin, if there ever was a puffin in the first place. He wanted to cast custard in a bad light, which is a disgusting habit. His puritanical preference for Strawberry Angel Delight(TM) made this explicit in my mind. That was the demon waiting to be released. I could not blame the Vicar for being tempted to cast custard in a bad light, I'm quite considerate like that, and it's quite a tempting thing to do, but there's no need to bring puffins into it. The insidious Martin Johnson had been there at the time the crime took place, the imprints of the barrel were left by the duckpond for all to see. There was just one more piece of the puzzle that I had to find, and I knew just where to find it...
Later that evening I took a stroll by the library, where I planned to meet my good buddy Jeff Goldblum. As I was sitting on the bench, minding my own business, who should I happen to espy but none other than Wise Craig, taking his stickleback out for an energetic walk. He had one of those fishbowl trolley things, which he had tied to his belt and was pulling along behind him. It wasn't until he was almost on top of me that he caught sight of me, which could've been something to do with the fact I was hiding behind a cardboard cut-out of Robbie Coltrane. I think he was about to ask Robbie Coltrane for his autograph (which was part of my plan as I knew full well he was a big Cracker fan), when I cast the cut-out aside and appeared before him. Wise Craig stood there for a moment, you could see the cogs whirring behind his glacier-like visage. Then from behind a pie shop nearby stepped Jeff Goldblum. There was no way out.
"Okay, you got me!" signed Craig.
"Not so wise now, are we?" quipped Goldblum.
"Yeah!" I added, "You unwise fool! We have you now!"
"It's a fair cop!" Craig gestured, foot-wise.
"Aha, but stop!" I yelled, "You may think that you can take the blame in a bid to lead us off the scent, but the little grey cells, they have been working overtime. It isn't you we want, Craigy Boy. You are implicit in this mystery, but you are not the main offender. It is Cuthbert who is the big villain of the piece! Yes, Cuthbert the Stickleback! Driven to despair from being kept in a pint-pot on the telly, having to listen to endless repeats of Telly Addicts and Cracker on Wise Craig's Betamax video, you eventually turned to evil. The duckpond from which you were swept as a young stickleback was the place you yearned for, yet could not return to, so you convinced the weak-willed Vicar to fill it with custard to prevent other people appreciating it's splendour. For you, the murder was just the sliced banana in the custard. You saw it as revenge in a twisted, sordid stickleback way. It's a simple matter of stickleback psychology. The motive was there, and you provided the means. It's a sad tale to have to behold, but there was no need to go as far as you did."
Cuthbert almost made a break for it, and would've gotten away if it wasn't for the pesky fact that his gills did not work in oxygen.
"Seems like he's a fish out of water!" jeered Goldblum, sardonically.
Wise Craig sat weeping in a huddle. In the horizon we heard the sound of Tommy Lee Jones and his squad approaching. I had just enough time to leave him a letter explaining the situation before I darted off into the darkness.
Martin Johnson had gotten away, saved once again by his insidious barrel, and I decided to leave the Vicar to his own sorry Angel Delight(TM)-based perversions, that was punishment enough. For this day at least, custard prevailed.
---Ken�s Casebook Ends---