Competition Winners
3rd Prize
Baffling Case of the Bognor Bureau Bird – Mike Jenkins
(Frantic knocking)
R: Don’t overthink it, you bloody fool! Just let the facts spill out!
Okay. Here goes…
One night – it was the depths of winter – I received the invitation to join The Bureau. Dr Clitheroe had been missing for several years by then…
Once I began piecing together what had happened to him, I sat right here at the desk and began writing it all down. In the leather-bound journal I found in the drawer – along with the old black pen and the bottle of Quink.
All the clues were there, in the little drawers and cubby-holes. The newspaper clippings, the photographs. I found the old train timetable, with the weird symbol next to the Barnham service. That was on the Saturday, at … (writing deliberately) 9:41 PM.
Then… (catches breath) Oh God, I don’t think there’s enough time!
(More knocking)
Wait! Just one more second! PLEASE! I’m trying to explain!
(Muttering to herself) Look, I didn’t ask for any of this. I’m just a pensioner. No, a retired professional – of “a certain age”, as they say. I thought I’d spend a few years travelling and writing. But now I can never get away.
Well… whatever will be, will be.
(Continuing frantically) THEN I found the hidden drawer in the desk. THIS desk, the Victorian bureau I bought from the Flea Market just before Christmas… I like to collect beautiful things. To give them a home.
The previous owner had died. Another writer, they said – found dead with this notebook open, all the pages blank. I liked the idea of honouring her memory. But not like… this.
As soon as I opened the drawer, I saw it. Towards the back, just below the carving of Ganesh. A red envelope, with an ancient address label. I swear, it wasn’t there before.
And handwritten in Gothic script was my name! I thought it was a receipt from the Flea Market. But no, it was a letter, which said:
“We are aware you have some questions relating to Dr David Clitheroe’s untimely demise…”
“You shall come to know all,” it continued. “But only if you join us. At The Bureau of Special Investigations.”
There’s no way this can end well, is there?
I mean, who receives a letter delivered by magic or witchcraft – one that inexplicably appears in the drawer of a handsome, early Victorian desk? An invitation to join a shadowy group of “private investigators”, they said. I’ve still never met them. I’ve no idea who they are!
(The knocking is emphatic, only now the desk lid flaps with each knock.)
You can knock all you like – I’m not frightened anymore! I’m doing exactly as you instructed! To explain how I came to solve the murder of Dr David Clitheroe – five years after his remains were discovered wrapped in newspaper, having been deep fried in the secret batter recipe of a well-known Bognor chip shop.
Well, it wasn’t difficult, really. Not once I put all the pieces together – the pieces of the mystery, I mean. Not the battered remains of Dr Clitheroe!
It was the train timetable, you see. And the curious geometric symbol next to the times of the changes at Barnham. A triangle made of three arrows! They were the key.
Dr Clitheroe took the same train from Bognor to Victoria every day for 25 years, changing at Barnham. Except on one fateful day, it was not David Clitheroe who arrived in London. It was someone else, using his Oyster card.
Clitheroe was in Bognor, in the back room of the fish and chip shop on the Pier, being chopped into tiny pieces by Angelo De-Marlo, the Sicilian-born owner of the chippy, thought to be a gangster back in the day. Known locally as The Cod Father.
The man on the train was one of De-Marlo’s associates, on his way to receive a briefcase full of cash in exchange for Clitheroe’s left kidney. The crooks at the chip shop had been running a black-market trade in body parts for organ transplants, the triangular symbol with the three arrows was their logo… a twisted reference to recycling, it seems. Case closed. All thanks to me.
Or so you’d think. Three days after that, the knocking started. Ever since I solved the case left open by the previous owner of this… demonic desk, new assignments keep arriving from the Bureau of Special Investigations. It won’t stop knocking and rattling until each new case is solved. (the knocking has stopped).
Wait a moment. The… Bureau… isn’t that strange?
(the desk drawer flies open.)
So, here’s my latest assignment: “Solve the mysterious death of… Miss R Haversham-Brookes, author and collector. Wait a moment! That’s…! [Blackout]