Detective Inspector Dixon glared at the headline. “Top plod can’t find bod!” it said. He couldn’t argue with the accuracy, but did they really have to make the type so large?
Dixon banged his Hawkbill pipe on the side of the ashtray, his anger helping to dislodge the dottle. He repacked it slowly with the Queen of Sheba, his favoured brand of Turkish tobacco.
The story below the headline was from the same school of tacky tabloid hackery. It read:
“Bumbling bobbies are still all at sea over a missing corpse at Lush Places.
“The unknown bird is believed to be the third murder victim of a cosy crime wave that has seen four murders at the estate known to locals as the Very Poor Man’s Downton Abbey. But while residents are reeling, the boys in blue have been left scratching their heads.
“Three weeks ago, the bodies of the first two victims were found in the hallway just 24 hours apart. Both murders remain unsolved.
“Days later, feathers were found in the hallway, on the floor of the second-best bedroom and on the blanket on the second-best bed, pointing to just one thing: a third murder. But puzzled plods have been unable to find the body.
“A fourth murder has since been committed and the body of the departed was laid to rest in the garden.
“Despite the investigation appearing to be on the last omnibus to a village called Nowhere, Detective Inspector GAS Dixon insisted he and his clueless coppers were pursuing a promising line of inquiry.
“Rumours have been rife that the Notorious Whiskers Gang, known to use the second-best bedroom as their criminal ‘pad’, are behind the cosy crime wave.
“Asked whether this was true, Dixon demurred: ‘Speculation is the enemy of good investigation. But I would like the people of Lush Places to be assured that we have our best people on this, and we will get to the bottom of this case, or my name is not Gregory Aloysius Samson Dixon’.”
Dixon put down the paper. The rotters, he thought. The dirty, damnable rotters. To distract himself from his pique, he gave the Queen of Sheba a firm poke with his brass tamper, struck a Swan Vesta match and puffed his pipe into life.
With the Hawkbill in his mouth he always felt like a proper detective, but the truth was he wasn’t at all certain he could find the missing body. Nor was he sure that he was getting anywhere near solving these vexing murders. What is more, the Notorious Whiskers Gang were still at large.
Not for the first time, Dixon wondered what his mentor would do. He had never met Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby. But after watching every episode of the documentary series Midsomer Murders he felt he knew the man better than his own face.
If Dixon had learned anything from Barnaby about cosy crime waves, it was that a detective always got his man, though not before half the county ended up in the morgue. Which meant that there could be at least one more body found at Lush Places before this sorry affair was over. And so it proved.
Sergeant Hewitson saluted. Dixon’s part-time assistant but full-time love interest had her policewoman’s bonnet pulled down low over her eyes, but he could see she was troubled. “There’s been a body found,” Hewitson said smartly.
“I can’t believe it. A fifth murder?” Dixon said, almost to himself.
Hewitson shook her head.
“Then what?”
“You best look yourself, sir.”
He followed her into the hallway where the little body lay. There were few signs of trauma, just a funny smell.
“Do you think it’s the missing murder victim?” he asked, hopefully. Then it hit him: no, not the missing body.
“It can’t be,” Dixon cried.
“It is,” Hewitson confirmed. “There’s been interfering with a corpse. Someone’s found the fourth murder victim in the garden and brought it back into the house. But why?”
“It’s a message,” Dixon said gravely, “and it reads, ‘Catch us if you can.’”
To be continued.
