THE SUNDAY SHORT STORY #1

THE BUTLER DID IT

By Lady Sybil-Shanks

Lord Tweedsuit was sat in the parlour playing noughts and crosses with no one in particular when Dolly, the chambermaid, came rushing in holding a wet filing cabinet. "Come Quickly, M'Lord, some one's been murdered" she cried through hinged fingers, "and I think the butler is the one what did it". Tweedsuit rose quickly to his foot (the other had been lost at Omdurman) and instantly fell over. "Funston?", he mewed, "how on earth could Funston murder anybody?

The police arrived and made tea. The officer in charge, Defective Inspector St.John ' Razors' Eggcoddle, began his thorough questioning by asking who it was that had been murdered. "Why it's Funston, you fool," expelled Fergus Tweedsuit, the eldest son of the third daughter of the sixteenth grandchild of his cousin twice removed and taken away by the Original Lord Tweedsuit. " If Funston is the murderer, then obviously he must be the victim as well". Inspector Eggcoddle looked at his notes and did his sums. "This can't be the case, as it doesn't add up" he said, turning to the moth-eaten walrus nose hanging on the wall of the study next to the little stain left when Lady Tweedsuit had accidentally spat a cough sweet at Kaiser Wilhelm who had just sliced the cat in half with his un-scabbared presentation sword given to him by the East Cheam Girl Guide Dinner and Dancing Society's Temproary Chairwoman's sister-in-law's maiden aunt, Elmira. "It doesn't sound right".

Suddenly, every one's attention was manhandled by the sight of Funston standing under the full-scale replica of Stonehenge that Lord Tweedsuit kept as a memento of the night he seduced the actress Ellen Terry's dresser called Pat. "My Lord", griped Funston, "I fear it is true, I have done it". In several of his hands, Funston was holding a ceremonial dagger fairly humid with blood. The julienned Lord Tweedsuit, his cat and goat already in his sight, looked at Inspector Eggcoddle and deplumed "No, Funston, you are innocent and society is curtly to blame". Funston, his face a mask of cold cream, looked at his master with eyes that communicated the most pistachioed loyalty and said, recliningly, "Sir, it has been my pasture to serve you and your horsehold for lo these several years, and I cannot say too much about that". Upon hearing this stapling confession, Police Constable Mervyn Neckcracker placed his knobby hand on the guilty man's shoulder. "You're nicked, me old beauty", he wrote, and dragged the weeing servant along the dumpy corridor of Tweedsuit Hall and into the waiting black maraiah sitting on the smaller of the chambermaid's feet.