The Book of Extraordinary Impossible Crimes and Puzzling Deaths by Maxim Jakubowski

Author:Maxim Jakubowski [Jakubowski, Maxim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781642502190
Publisher: Mango Media
Published: 2020-05-16T15:23:30+00:00

Gorilla Tactics

ERIC BROWN

Fifty years ago, my grandfather was killed in very peculiar circumstances.

I only discovered the details from my mother earlier this year. All I knew before then was that my grandfather had died at the age of sixty-five, long before I was born. My mother rarely mentioned her father, other than to say he was a kind, loving man who had worked as a solicitor in the local town, five miles from the village of Humble Barton where he’d lived for most of his life.

“I’ve never told you much about Arthur, have I, Edward?” She indicated the black-and-white photograph of a tall gray-haired man in tennis flannels, a briar pipe clenched in his smiling mouth.

It was the occasion of my weekly visit. I poured my mother a cup of Earl Grey and one for myself.

“No, you haven’t,” I said. “A solicitor, wasn’t he?”

She nodded absently, sucking on a bourbon biscuit. “He worked for forty years in the firm of Shackleton, Vine, and Brooke, right here in Sherborne. Nice man. Salt of the earth, people said. Anyway,” she went on, “he was murdered.”

I lowered my teacup. “Murdered?”

“By a gorilla.”

I stared at her. She was getting on—almost ninety—but until now had always struck me as sound of mind.

“A gorilla?” I echoed.

“That’s right, a gorilla riding a unicycle.”

Before I could ask her if she was feeling well, she continued.

“I’m serious, Edward. I’d just married your father and we’d moved up to London for his work. I had a phone call from your grandfather’s neighbor, saying that Arthur was dead and I had to come down. He’d had an accident while crossing the road. I thought she meant he’d been hit by a car—not that he’d been murdered by a gorilla. Anyway, your father drove me down and we did what we had to do, identified the body, and then a nice young constable gave us a cup of tea—it must have been hard for him, come to think of it—and told us how your grandfather had met his end.”

“A gorilla,” I said, “on a unicycle?”

“One evening in July. It came around the corner, just across from his cottage, and hit Arthur on the head with a hammer. Then it pedaled off down the lane, past the church, and disappeared along Duck Pond Lane. Little Alfie Rhodes saw it all. He was the only witness.”

“And did they catch the gorilla?” I asked.

My mother shook her head. “No, Edward. No, they didn’t. That’s why I’m telling you now. You see, I want you to investigate.”

“Investigate?” I spluttered.

“Well, you are a crime writer, aren’t you?” she said, nodding toward my ranked titles in the bookcase beside the fireplace.

“I write crime novels,” I reminded her. “I don’t investigate crimes. There’s a big difference.”

“Still,” she said, reaching out and gripping my hand with frail, bony fingers, “you’ll do it for me, won’t you, Edward?”

***

The day after assuring my mother that I’d look into her father’s mysterious death, I motored over to Humble Barton and spoke to a few locals.

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