Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series by Whitbourn John

Author:Whitbourn, John [Whitbourn, John]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Spark Furnace Books
Published: 2011-11-14T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

Seated (drinkless) on the various randomly acquired bits of furniture in the ‘living room’, we waited for Mr Wessner to explain the riddle.

‘It had been a really hard day at the town hall,’ he started, by way of introduction.

‘Ha!’ laughed the landlord, before Disvan hushed him to silence.

‘It had,’ Wessner insisted. ‘Some of my memos had gone astray in the internal post, the borough treasurer was in a funny mood—you know how it is...’

We didn’t, but let it pass.

‘So, all in all, when I got home, having been rained on all the way, I was feeling pretty fractious. What should I find on the doormat but a lot of bills waiting for me. Not only that, but there was a letter demanding money with menaces.’

‘Really?’ said Mr Patel, his interest aroused. ‘Did you tell the police?’

Mr Wessner furrowed his brow.

‘What for? It was from my ex-wife’s solicitors, and the police are in league with them. Anyway, that was nearly the last straw—or so it seemed then. “I need a drink,” I thought, and went into the kitchen to fetch one. It was then I remembered that I should have gone shopping in the lunch hour but hadn’t had the time, what with the memos and everything. Needless to say, restocking the drinks cabinet had been item number one on the shopping list and now, to quote a phrase, the cupboard was bare.

‘Never mind,’ I thought, ‘chin up; there’s a bottle of champagne in the fridge that you’ve been saving, on the off-chance you’ll ever have something to celebrate again. Splash out and salvage the day with that.

‘So I did. Then the fridge door joined the conspiracy against me. Somehow, Lord knows why, the handle sort of trapped my hand and down goes the bottle to the floor—SMASH! And that really was the last straw.

‘I can remember staring up at the heavens, at a loss for something bad enough to say. When I’d finished my message to the Almighty, I looked down and saw that there were champagne splashes all over my newly dry-cleaned suit. Thereafter, it’s all a bit blurred but I recall wanting to get to grips with the fates that were doing this to me. I wanted to get my hands on the person responsible and see how they liked being mucked about.

‘It sounds a bit childish, I know, but I was so angry that I must have sort of scrabbled at the air in front of me with my nails—and it tore!’

Involuntarily, we all turned to look at the closed door to the kitchen.

‘And then I decided to go to the Argyll,’ said Mr Wessner, briskly ending on an unconvincing note.

Mr Disvan had his ‘heard it all before and was bored the first time’ expression on. Like supplicants at an ancient oracle, we waited for him to pronounce judgement on the matter. As happened in about fifty percent of such cases, we were wasting our time.

‘I must admit,’ he said eventually, ‘I did wonder about that pool of liquid and broken bottle on the floor.

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