Tag Archives: murder

Hopeless inhabitants

Rhys Quinn – resident

1 Comment

The curious thing about Rhys is how often he turns out to have been at the scene of terrible accidents, killings and events that were possibly murders. And yet, somehow he’s never actually looking the right way at the time. Sometimes he hears the screams, he tells us, but by then it tends to be too late.

More conspiracy-minded folk amongst you may have leapt to the conclusion that Rhys is a master-criminal who has, for many years, escaped both detection and justice.

You’d be wrong about that.

Often there are other witnesses about who are able to confirm that Rhys certainly was where he said he was and that he cannot possibly have caused whatever thing it was this time.

The more superstitious amongst you may be wondering if there could be some uncanny or magical reason why Rhys causes terrible things to happen to other people. Is his cane a cursed item? Is there a demon following around?

One of our gentlemen of the Scientific Society explained to me that Rhys causes a fortune entanglement because he emits an etheric wave rather than a particle, which can be demonstrated if you get Mr Quinn to stand in front of a large mirror while entirely covered in mud. So far Mr Quinn has declined to repeat this experiment and we can hardly disapprove of his reluctance!

Births, Deaths, Marriages, Island News

Christopher Miles had it coming

Leave a comment

By Frampton Jones

Who could have killed Christopher Miles? There are so many people with motives that I fear we shall never know the truth.  It could have been any of us, so let me be first to say… but of course it was not me…

Currency here on the island has always been a simple business. The number on the coin is generally taken to indicate the worth of the coin. Exceptions may be made if the substance of the coin is deemed more valuable than the number suggests, but we’ve always been able to settle that in traditional ways. Bargaining, pleading, shouting, punching, threatening and so forth. On the whole, our systems worked very well.

Then Christopher Miles shipwrecked here, with his notions of exchange rates, relative values, currency fluctuations, market prices and a thousand other terms that were as impressive as they were impenetrable.

As is always the way of it, there are always ears open to ideas here. Always people ready to break with custom for the sake of personal advantage. But none of us really knew what we were doing and so it came down to Christopher himself to determine the relative value of coins, and settle disputes.  It was only natural that anyone on the wrong end of his judgements would hold him personally responsible for the consequences. There were so many of us with grudges.

But now he has dead, and we can stop hitting each other with blunt objects and settle back down to using the numbers on the coins to measure their worth again, and we can all have pies, and pints, and hairy coffee and all the simple joys that make life bearable. And you can all go back to paying what you used to pay for copies of The Hopeless Vendetta, thank you very much.

Doc Willoughby said to me, “Much as I hate to ever accuse anyone of murder, there were an awful lot of stab wounds, more than a chap might do to himself in despair. It’s hard to stab yourself in the back, although you’d be surprised about how many people do that to themselves. I have no idea who did it of course. I never met any of them. I wasn’t there. Someone else might have seen it, but I most certainly did not, he was dead long before I saw his body.”

And for once, I find myself in absolute concurrence with the wisdom of our good Doctor.

Births, Deaths, Marriages, Island News

Further Carnage at the Home for Uncanny Cats

1 Comment

By Frampton Jones

There were scenes of carnage last night at the Hopeless Home for Uncanny Cats. After the death of founder Crysta earlier this week, the cats have been uneasy. You’ve probably heard them. However, the yowling last night achieved new levels of volume and unease, drawing many of us out into the streets where we huddled together nervously. It’s never easy to tell whether one should face the horror, or hide under the bedclothes and pray for an easy death.

A bold few of us ventured towards the source of the sound. The cat’s home was covered in cats – far more than I think could have been living there. They covered the roof and surrounding garden, and the dim that they made was almost unbearable. It was clear from some distance that windows had been smashed, and the door broken down. Whoever attacked the establishment felt no need to be subtle about it.

Erekiel Morningstar Vaehne took over running the Home for Uncanny Cats only this week, after the sudden and still unexplained death of Crysta. There can be little doubt that whoever killed her must also have been responsible for this breaking, entering and murdering. Even Doc Willoughby, who is always reticent about blaming anyone for anyone’s death, had to agree that a man with a large, ornate knife sticking out of his chest probably hadn’t died of natural causes. Doc Willoughby concedes that while it could be suicide, it would seem odd to back violently through several items of furniture while trying to end yourself.

What did this violent intruder want? What was in the Home for Uncanny Cats that both Crysta and Erekiel were willing to protect at such costs? Should other cat owners now fear for their lives? Clearly, there is some horrific cat-related plot afoot, and it is one the perpetrator considers it worth killing for, and so dastardly is this plot that there has been no effort to disguise it. Who among us would do such a thing?

Erekiel has been left where he fell, on the understanding that resident dustcats would probably want to eat him. There have been suggestions muttered in the pub about whether the dustcats themselves may have turned psychotic, driven by a hunger for human flesh to start killing the people around them. It is my understanding that dustcats only eat the bodies of those they love, but even this long established truth now seems questionable.

News Item

Dead

3 Comments

a scene that will haunt me forever.
a scene that will haunt me forever.

 

Normally I do little more than naming the dead. It is the end of a story and I would rather share interesting news, things we can do something about. This morning, the word ‘Dead’ appeared, crafted from fish just outside my house. From the word came a trail of debris – shells, fish, driftwood, stones, leading all the way across town to the O’Stoat house. Others had found and followed the trail and a crowd had gathered there before I arrived. As no one else seemed inclined to venture in, I did so myself. The house was entirely empty, aside from human remains. Doc Willoughby is investigating and hopes to identify the body. It would appear that one of the O’Stoats is dead, and the other two have fled. Another sad chapter in the life of this cursed family.