Day 66

Dear Diary,

Well, you remember me telling you about Police Constable Humbert Da Elephant and his partner Police Constable Helen Da Barren, who’s what they use to call a ‘woman policeman’ back in the good old days when a woman had to get dinner on the table at half past five sharp or else it was grounds for her to get beat up black and blue? Well, last thing I wrote was about Missus Drain ringing them on her mobile phone and telling ‘em to come over to Misther Patchouli Da Fanny’s falling-down pink flatpack building and collect Miss Parsley Da Onker and Missus Malla Oda Odipossipous, on account of they’d expired and died and everybody was tripping over them and stubbing their toes. She didn’t say nothing about Misther Patchouli Da Fanny’s nose getting stuck in The Widow Fartie Da Whistle’s bottom hole or about how his drool had shorted out the laser illuminations on her Murkin or anything else wot was going on. She knowed both Police Constable Humbert Da Elephant and his partner Police Constable Helen Da Barren from the days when they was little seven year olds in her classroom and was afeared they’d be embarrassed to death hearing those words from her mouth. Better, she thought, to let ‘em find out for themselves. That way they’d think she’d not noticed wot all the botheration was about, on account of her innocent and sweet nature. Little did they know her father and mother’d been the infamous Mad Slashers of Penzance, back in the days when inviting mass murderers to dinner parties and two rubbers of bridge was de rigueur (as they say). She were used to the seamier side of life right from when she had to climb out of her mother’s front bottom all by herself when her mother was otherwise occupied, wot with her being hanged and drawn and quartered and not in the mood for seeing if’n her newest born was a ginger or not. Which, by the way, she weren’t, on account of Missus Drain (or Louisa Bimble Da Slasher as she was knowed before Ol’ Man Drain took mercy on her and married her the following day) were as brown-haired as a sewer rat, only better smelling. Strange to say, Ol’ Missus Drain growed up to be a right cracker, as well as an all round good person, but you’ve probably guessed that by now seeing as how I’ve said it often enough.

Anyway, everybody else was all for leaving Miss Parsley Da Onker and Missus Malla Oda Odipossipous on the road in hopes that a passing lorry’d squish ‘em into the gravel or, alternatively, propping ‘em up on the back seat, back where the delinquents get to sit and also the old men wot’re allergic to taking baths. They figured it were a cool day and in any case the bodies wouldn’t start to bloat or grow black as a crow’s gizzard or stink like a gas pipe for at least a few hours, and by that time the bus (being me) would have delivered everybody else back to their little concrete bunker bungalows. Excepting Missus Milly Da Fardle, who with any luck’d be packed off to the prison farm by then. Missus Drain, however, said they had wot she called a moral obligation to send Miss Parsley Da Onker and Missus Malla Oda Odipossipous to Misther Doctor Bernie Da Gnu’s ‘Wash ‘n’ Wake Funeral Parlour for a Beautiful Goodbye’ so they could be given a beautification by Ol’ Beryl and’d look like two of them waxworks glamour models, complete with pointy standing out tits and luminous murkins of their own. Never mind they’d always looked like death warmed over. That was when they were alive and nobody’d have anything to do with ‘em. When they was dead it was a different story and they had to be treated with respect. Anyway, Missus Drain said ifn’t they weren’t dolled up and made to look like a dead person oughta, when they got to The Gnu-Fanny Deluxe Luxury Fancy-Schmancy Cat Food Company they might not know they was dead and’d send ‘em off back home, or worse yet to The Day Hospital for a Nice Afternoon Out. Since Missus Drain thought that’d be disrespectful and all, she went ahead by herself and telephoned Police Constable Humbert Da Elephant and his partner Police Constable Helen Da Barren and told ‘em to bring a couple’a shovels to scrape the bodies off’n the road, where they’d got all mished from the old biddies walking all over ‘em in the scramble to get to their favourite seats on the bus (being me), and also a coupl’a jumbo-sized black bags and maybe a flatbed truck. “You’d better hurry on over in double-quick time,” she said in the sort of schoolmarm voice she’d used on ‘em back in the days when she liked to scare the shit outta them in her classroom. Then just for the Hell of it, on account of she had wot you could call a great sense of humour, she added, “Miss Parsley Da Onker and Missus Malla Oda Odipossipous’ve been murdered to death or my parents weren’t The Mad Slashers of Penzance.” This, of course, put Police Constable Humbert Da Elephant and his partner Police Constable Helen Da Barren in an awkward position, on account of they’d just ordered their fourth bucket of Thelma O’Leary’s American-style All You Can Eat Breakfast Fixings and they couldn’t just walk out without being rude. So wot they did was tell Missus Drain to tell everybody they was under arrest and to wait for ‘em to come on over. They said they’d be over quick as you please to conduct one of them specious investigations, complete with all the gruelling interrogations you sees on television as well torturing the corpuses delicates until they points the finger at the folks nobody likes. They didn’t come out and accuse Missus Milly Da Fardle out loud, but that’s wot they meant. ‘Course, Missus Drain, who were smarter’n a bucket of eels, knew wot they were intimating but didn’t say a thing. No use getting Missus Milly Da Fardle riled up at a time like this, or she might run away and not get to go to the prison farm with Misther Patchouli Da Fanny and Mister Doctor Bernie Da Gnu. Or she might just murder them all in their beds, or in this case, in the bus (being me).

I’m gonna lay my pencil down at this point in time for another of wot they calls a pregnant pause. I’ll count to fifty or sixty, during which you won’t have anything to read, Dear Diary, so you might as well do something else. When I figure I’ve built up enough suspense to make your knickers tingle, I’ll say so endeth my pregnant pause, and’ll continue on with wot I’ve gotta say.