Thursday, November 19, 2020

The Body in the Librarah


The Body in the Librarah

by Agony Chrisper

 Chapter One


Scene: Dining room at Threshold Manor. Colonel Wellington Ambrose (Rtd) is about to crack open his breakfast egg.


Door swings wildly open and in rushes a maid.


Maid: Oh, Sir, Sir….There’s a body in the library.


Ambrose: What’s that you say? A body in the librarah? Don’t be silly, girl. There are books and bound copies of Country Life in the librarah. Not bodies.


Maid: But, sir, I saw it with my own eyes.  

 

Ambrose rings for the butler, a stout man with a stoical bearing.


Ambrose: See here, Webster, this silly girl says there’s a body in the librarah. Go take a look, my good man. A body, indeed!


Webster returns.


Webster: I’m sorry to report sir, but there is a body in the library.


Dolly Ambrose has entered as Webster was speaking.


Dolly: What’s Webster talking about—a body in the library?


Ambrose: Apparently so. You didn’t order one from Harrods by any chance, my dear?


Dolly: You know, Welly, that Harrods cut off our credit two years ago. I think you should call your golfing partner, the Chief Constable. It’s probably a police matter.


Ambrose: Righto. And you should send the chauffeur for your friend Jane Maypole—the one who solves all the crimes around here.


Dolly: You dismissed the chauffeur last month, Welly.


Ambrose: Then have her take a taxi.


An hour or so later.


Chief Constable: Because the body was clad in a silvery evening gown and open-toed, high-heeled shoes, the crime scene team have speculated that the body is that of a woman. 


Ambrose: A woman. Now that is a turn-up. Anything else you can tell me, Dexter?


Chief Constable: The money’s on foul play.


They are interrupted by a small, spidery woman in a flowery housedress, holding a brown handbag with both hands.


Woman: Indeed, Chief Constable. And I fear much worse is to come.


Dolly: May I introduce you to Jane Maypole, Dexter?


Chief Constable: How do you do, Miss Maypole. Your crime-solving exploits have preceded you. But why do you say that much worse is to come?


Jane: It reminds me of the time that Eleanor Bushville, the butcher’s daughter ran away from St. Runnymede with the seed salesman. She, too, had fingernails like the woman in the library—all bitten to the nub. Oh yes, that was a terrible event.


Enter a Detective.


Detective: Our first breakthrough, Chief Constable. One of the constables recognized the dress from a poster at the Hotel de la Mer—you know, at Beachhurst. It was advertising the arrival of a Lily Deshea as a dance instructor.


Chief Constable: Good work, Simmons. Now we know who the victim is.


Jane: Oh, but, Chief Constable, we don’t. Her fingernails.


***


Chapter Sixteen


One Week Later


Scene: A sunlit room at the Hotel de la Mer


Dolly: So, Jane, it really was about the fingernails.


Jane: Yes. A ballroom dance instructress would never chew her fingernails like that. That’s why I suspected a switch of bodies.


Ambrose: That is quite remarkable. 


Dolly: And it was all about getting old Mr. Robinson’s inheritance? With Lily Deshea out of the way, the daughter-in-law would inherit?


Ambrose: But why put the body in my librarah?


Jane: Now, that was the tricky part. But I remembered a school play in St. Runnymede which involved the switch of characters. That was what gave me the final clue.


Dolly: You are amazing, Jane. You and St. Runnymede!


The End


*

Obviously inspired by the television adaptation of Agatha Christie's The Body in the Library starring Joan Hickson as Miss Marple, with Moray Watson as the Colonel. I recommend the show--but I especially hope that you get to see the first twenty minutes or so, which, if not falling on the floor hilarious, are a wonderful send-up of the British county upper class and are certainly giggle worthy.





Thursday, November 12, 2020

Who's Your Team?

In a recent book review in The New Yorker, James Wood wrote of

professional soccer players crossing themselves as they run onto the field, as if God really cared whether Arsenal beats Manchester United.(1)

This statement led me, as an Arsenal fan, to wonder whether God preferred Arsenal or Manchester United.


So I got on the telephone to ask him. The late chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, Jonathan Sacks, once wrote that “God has spoken to mankind in many languages”(2); so it makes sense that he can also be spoken to in different languages, and English works. 


Here, as on-line magazines like to say, is a lightly-edited transcript of our conversation.


Us: Hello, God, how’re you doing?


God: Busy, busy. You know the universe keeps expanding, so I got a lot more heaven to cover. For example, they just discovered that there are about 300 million “habitable exoplanets.”(3) Now I have to figure out how to populate them. I need some new ideas, since the homo sapiens template obviously is a failure. 


Us: I see. I imagine then that busy as you are you must have some sharp views about some things that James Wood cites in his review of T. M. Luhrmann’s How God Becomes Real:

Elaine prays for guidance about whether to take a roommate or move to a new apartment. . . . Stacy prays for a good haircut, and Hannah asks God about whom to date. . . . Rachel asks for help with how to dress: “Like, God, what should I wear?" 

God: See what I mean about homo sapiens? They’re so self-centered that they think the creator of the universe has to drop everything he’s doing and tell them what their hemline should be. 


Us: But, God, I imagine that’s not the worst of it. How about someone like Irvin Baxter?


God: Who’s he?


Us: He was minister at something called Endtime Ministries. He claimed that “premarital sex was the reason the coronavirus exists.”(4) He said the “coronavirus may be a privilege.”


God: A privilege?


Us: Yes, because supposedly you are using the pandemic as “awake-up call” to warn that “there is a much bigger judgment coming.”


God: Where’d he get that?


Us: He said the Bible.


God: Nuts!


Us: By the way, he died of the virus. Err, just to change the subject, I read that 

[m]any tried and true prophetic Christians said they heard from God this year that Donald Trump would win a second term.(5)

God: You’re joking, right?


Us. Nope.


God: Well, now I’ve heard it all! OK. I’m outta here. Got to see about those alternate earths. 


[Phone call ends.]


Us: Oh damn! I forgot to ask about Arsenal and Man United. 


Hmm. It says here in the Times obituary of Rabbi Sacks that he was great friends with George Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury:

Their shared interests went beyond religion: They had a mutual passion for the Arsenal soccer club and occasionally went to games together.

Of course! How could they ever root for a team whose nickname is “The Red Devils”?






***


(1)  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/09/does-knowing-god-just-take-practice 


(2)  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/world/europe/jonathan-sacks-dead.html?searchResultPosition=1


(3)  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/science/astronomy-exoplanets-kepler.html?searchResultPosition=1


(4)  https://news.yahoo.com/televangelist-referred-coronavirus-privilege-died-034254209.html


(5)  https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/2020/november/the-prophets-did-not-get-it-wrong-its-not-over





Sunday, November 1, 2020

Head in the Sand Trap

Mark Twain did not originate the famous quote “Golf is a good walk spoiled.” Who did is apparently still up in the air. Nevertheless, the sport can still serve as an excuse for wearing funny pants.


 *


I recall reading an article in which Alistair Cooke wrote about meeting an old Scotsman, who told him, “If it’s nae the wind and it’s nae the rain, it’s nae the golf.”(1) The British, Cooke wrote in another article, expect that they must overcome difficulty in their pursuit of a good score:

Most Britons, of whatever skill, have been brought up to regard a links course as the ideal playground, on which the standard hazards of the game are the wind, bumpy, treeless fairways, deep bunkers and knee‐high rough.(2) 

I am reminded of Robert Frost’s defense of rhymed  poetry: writing poetry without rhyme is like “playing tennis without a net.” If there is to be a sense of accomplishment, there must have been a obstacle to be overcome. Do you get a feeling of worth taking candy from a baby?


*


It doesn’t take great mental acuity to be a somewhat good golfer. You just need to have a handle on rudimentary arithmetic. You need to count to 18 for the number of holes you will play, to distinguish between, say, the number 7 on an iron and the number 9 on another, and, most important, to be able to count up to about 100, the number of strokes if you’re not having a good day.


Now, we all know that Jack Nicklaus was a quantum leap better than being a “somewhat good golfer.” Hall of Famer, in fact. But that doesn’t mean that he has surpassed the Sunday golfers in arithmetical proficiency. Commenting the other day on the death toll from COVID-19, he asserted, “I don’t think the deaths are a correct number.”(3)


Unless Nicklaus carries a diploma in epidemiology (that I am not aware of) around in his golf bag next to his putter, I must question whether his arithmetical skill allows him to reach the number 200,000. 


Why a news source would bother quoting a golfer on the pandemic is beyond me. What I do know is that if he added his golf score card with the same disregard for facts, he would be disqualified from any tournament.  


***


(1)  I recall reading that in The New York Times Magazine, but, alas, a search of the paper came up with naught. There are other sites that do mention that saying as proverbial amongst the Scots.


(2)  https://www.nytimes.com/1977/01/23/archives/great-golf-courses-how-britons-suffer.html?searchResultPosition=9


(3)  https://sports.yahoo.com/jack-nicklaus-hydroxychloroquine-covid-19-deaths-donald-trump-endorsement-000926255.html