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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sheelba of the Eye" data-source="post: 9744470" data-attributes="member: 7046890">“Let me get this straight. You think my neighbour, Bernard, Mr. Corbitt, was carrying, how did you put it? A hand wrapped up in canvas? Mr. Corbitt? Bernard?”Dorothy was far from convinced. Things like that just don’t happen on her parent’s road. That’s the sort of thing you might expect in, well, Yorkshire or somewhere. Why would Mr. Corbitt be carrying a hand around anyway? The whole thing smelt funny, no pun intended. Yasmine was somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand (no pun intended) it was obviously ridiculous, on the other, it would be a scoop if it turned out to be real. “Real Live Frankenstein in Regents Park”! Okay, that was a little lurid, but still…Dorothy reluctantly handed chipped cups to her guests as they mulled over the situation. She couldn’t see any way of avoiding helping the others, at least in disproving this silliness. They arranged to meet once again at Dorothy’s parents’s house and parted.Percy was not in the best of moods. He had left his hat at Dorothy’s again, and people had been commenting on his wet hair all morning. How did he know it was going to rain? “Yes, I do have a hat.” “No, I haven’t lost it, merely mislaid it.” “No, the lady whose house I left it isn’t a beau.” “No, she wasn’t a flapper, she was a librarian, for heaven’s sake!” Really, what kind of society could be so hat obsessed? It wasn’t even lunch time when Percy spotted the first mistake of the day. Dr. Hirschfeld (no relation to the German sexologist) had prescribed something wholly inappropriate! It didn’t improve his mood to be giggled at by a couple of the secretaries as he walked along a corridor mainly devoted to admin and offices. It took him a good few minutes to explain the inappropriateness of Dr. Hirschfeld’s mistake although the chap was gracious enough when he realised the issue, which went a long way in alleviating Percy’s irritation. Wondering whether the rain had eased up, he barely managed to step aside from a man storming out of an office, looking back into the room he was walking out of.“Just do it right, next time!” Barked Mr. Corbitt to whoever he had been talking to. Mr. Corbitt appeared to be very angry and didn’t even stop to apologise to Percy, even though Percy had had to side step pretty sharpish to avoid a collision. Percy was aware that “That’s unusual” barely covered it. He had only gone a few steps before he turned around to watch one of the porters emerge for the office looking somewhat abashed. “That’s, hmm, Randolph, Randolph, Randolph Tomaszewski.” What business could he have with one of Dorothy’s neighbours? Randolph worked somewhere in the basement, didn’t he? With the incinerator. How odd.Dorothy was only a few minutes home that evening when the door knocker was, well, knocked. Mr. Corbitt’s smiling face was revealed by opening the door.“Hello, Doreen, I thought I spotted you. You must be looking after the house while your parents are away. How are old Martin and Joan?”Dorothy, sighing inwardly, explained that they were on a cruise to Egypt and wouldn’t be home for some time.“I often pop over with a box of home-grown vegetables when I have a harvest. As they aren’t here and you are, I thought you might like them.”He raise the large box of courgettes, tomatoes, runner beans, spring onions and a couple of peaches.“As you appear to have grown into a responsible young lady,” [“Really,” thought Dorothy, you’re only 10 years older than me] “I wondered if you could do the same for me. I’m away for a few days next week, would you be a dear and pop in, water the plants, that sort of thing.”Oh, er, I’d be delighted,” replied Dorothy, regretting it instantly. A few more pleasantries were exchanged and they agreed that Mr. Corbitt (“Bernard, please”) would pop back with a key over the weekend.Before long the usual suspects were sitting around Dorothy’s kitchen table. Michel took over the box of food and started cooking a ratatouille while Dorothy made more tea and everyone settled down to discuss the suspicions of Blabla. Percy had joined them to collect the hat he left the previous night. Percy’s intelligence was curious but it didn’t alter the fact that Dorothy was more suspicious of Michel than Bernard. That Michel turned out to be a surprisingly good cook for someone wealthy enough to have not seen inside of a kitchen for years helped allay Dorothy’s fears. She agreed to look through the newspaper archives at her library the next day. Yasmine had already searched through back copies of The Great Chase to no avail. Michel and Yasmine were to visit Registry House to snoop on Mr.Corbitt’s business interests while Percy was going to check out Randolph a little more.Back at the library Dorothy was in her element. She soon found a series of press cuttings. There was a short article about the death of Bernard’s father some 14 years ago. They had been in India together when, while trekking, they had been set upon by some bandits [“Bandits? Isn’t this the 1920’s?”] and old Theodore Corbitt had fallen to his death. No body was found. Another article recalled the death of Bernard’s wife and new born, 12 years earlier. He had apparently returned home to find that his wife had gone into labour and, despite the presence of the midwife, both his young (22 year old) wife and son died in childbirth. Funnily enough, the midwife had had a stroke, according to a third article, and had been taken to a local sanitarium following Mr. Corbitt’s discovery of the macabre scene. Dorothy couldn’t but help feeling a little uneasy. On a whim she looked for anything about Randolph Tomaszewski and found a unsettling piece about him being arrested on suspicion of harming animals. This one was dated a few months ago. Her unease increased…</blockquote>

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