Tales From the Graveyard

by Guy N Smith

(from Graveyard Rendezvous 16)

  A Raymond Odell detective story.

  In the 1960s Guy created a fictional detective and wrote a few short stories about him. Raymond Odell, the aquiline featured private eye and his young assistant, Tommy Bourne, work akin to several ‘tec duos of the ‘pulp’ era. Sadly these private eye stories no longer exist today except for collectors who search car boot sales, second hand bookshops and book fairs. Detective fiction today is much more sophisticated, based on police procedure and modern technology. DNA has killed off the good old-fashioned detective stories where the hero had to rely upon his wits and powers of observation and was often called in to assist an official colleague. So Guy has written an original Odell yarn in the old style especially for those nostalgic readers and to introduce to our younger fans a good old-fashioned mystery tale. Study the clues as you go and see if you can beat Odell to the solution.

  ‘The police will get some bad press if we don't get to the bottom of this one in double quick time, Odell,’ Detective Chief Inspector Richmond's expression was one of concern. ‘Animal lovers will raise a big stink over a mutilated ostrich than ever they would over a murder. And with this “Phantom Horse slasher”, as the press have dubbed him, still at large the public will accuse us of dragging our heels because we are not concerned about animals. Clearly this is the work of a maniac even if it isn't the guy who has already carved up half a dozen horses and ponies.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Raymond Odell was on his hands and knees beside the dead ostrich which resembled a heap of bloodied feathers. His fingers eased back the feathers and revealed several gaping wounds where a sharp blade had delved deep and gouged. ‘I would've thought an ostrich would have been a darned sight more difficult to catch and mutilate than an equine, one kick from these birds can kill a man stone dead, and a peck from this beak could... hmmm, that's interesting.’ His long slender fingers probed the neck, revealed an abrasion of the skin beneath.

  ‘What is it, Chief?’ Tommy Bourne peered over Odell's shoulder.

  ‘Almost as if whoever did this throttled it first,’ Odell reached his powerful lens out his pocket, examined the mark intently. Then he held up a strand of what appeared to be coarse hair.

  ‘Any ideas, Odell?’ Richmond was anxious; impatient.

  ‘Maybe, maybe not.’ Raymond Odell straightened up, smiled. The other two knew well enough that if the detective had found a clue then he would not reveal it until his deductions were complete. ‘I think we'll go and have a chat with the Masons first and see where we go from there.’

  ‘A few years ago ostrich farming was something that was going to make anybody brave enough to change from conventional farming filthy rich,’ Don Mason was in his early forties but his features were etched with lines caused by worry. ‘Then, as you've probably read in the papers, everything began to fall apart. We're struggling to survive, and the loss of this stud bird will virtually knock us for six. If we could have reared some healthy stock from him then we might've made it. He cost us two grand, now look what some maniac's done to him...and us!’

  ‘Where does one buy birds like ostriches from?’ Odell asked as if it was a matter of casual interest.

  ‘A company calling itself Ostrich International Ltd,’ Jane, Mason's petite blonde wife, answered. ‘A fly-by-night enterprise. They must have taken hundreds of thousands of pounds from folks like ourselves.’

  ‘Do you employ any farm workers?’

  ‘Only at very busy times,’ Mason replied. ‘Casual labour, if and when we can get it. We were lucky last week, there's a circus comes to town once a year and they camp on a stretch of common about a mile from here. One of the performers needed some extra cash for a few days in between acts. He was a good worker, a guy named Porson. Kept himself to himself, I'd rather it was like that. Don't even know what he did at the circus, I never asked and he didn't volunteer any information. He stopped on for a couple of days after the circus moved on, then left to join them. Don't expect we'll see him again. I can't afford him now,’ he added wryly.

  ‘Where's the circus moved to now?’ Odell's eyes narrowed.

  ‘They always go from here to Radwick, about twenty miles away. I presume they've followed their regular itinerary this year.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Odell said once they were back in the car. ‘How do you two fancy a visit to the circus? We better have a word with this Porson fellow but first I think we'll watch a performance incognito. I haven't been since I was a boy.’ He laughed softly to himself as Richmond and Tommy exchanged glances.

  Jeffrey's Circus was clearly a low budget show as Richmond remarked to Odell as they sat in the sparse audience. The two clowns had been clumsy and unfunny, the trapeze artist's “stunts” were little more than gymnastics. ‘And that lion,’ Richmond grunted, ‘is old and toothless.’

  ‘And sedated,’ Odell grimaced.

  The lion ambled out of the ring behind Marcus, the trainer. There was a lengthy pause and then Joseph Jeffrey, clad in worn and frayed ringmaster's attire, announced that, ‘You are now about to witness, ladies and gentlemen, the cowboy right from the wild west. Allow me to introduce you to Buckaroo Bill!’

  Tommy's boredom soon vanished. The cowboy, in authentic clothing, sat on his horse with ease and skill, whirled a lariat with true expertise. Then, from the entrance tunnel, bounded a half-grown calf. Buckaroo Bill whirled his lasso, threw it deftly over the animal’s head, rolled it kicking and twisting in a cloud of sawdust. In one perfectly coordinated movement he leapt from his mount, trussed the calf with a length of rope. Then he turned to the audience, swept his Stetson from his head and bowed to the applause.

  ‘I think we'll have a word with Mister Jaffrey after the show,’ Odell muttered to Richmond.

  ‘Can’t see how all this figures in the business of the mutilated ostrich,’ Richmond answered and then fell silent. Whatever his unofficial colleague suspected, he was unlikely to explain until his suspicions were either proved or disproved.

  ‘We're finishing at the end of the summer,’ Joseph Jeffrey was clearly ill-at-ease with the presence of the detectives. His caravan was shabby and basic, proof enough that circuses were no longer money-spinning enterprises. ‘Kids today don't want circuses, they'd sooner watch videos or play computer games. If we get out this year we'll just about break-even. I was a fool to think that we could make a success of a continental tour. Holland was a disaster, hardly anybody turned up for the shows and we had to hire animals. Marcus refused to perform with a lion he didn't know and we forked out a grand for a blooming ostrich for Buckaroo Bill to lasso. That was the best part of the show.’

  ‘An ostrich?’ Odell snapped, ‘But you haven't got it now?’

  ‘No,’ Jaffrey gave a wry smile. ‘Had to go into quarantine. Six bloomin’ months without our best act, couldn't afford to wait. So I sold it to a firm I read about in the papers which sells ostriches to farmers. At least I recouped some of my losses that way. They collected it from the quarantine place themselves.’

  ‘I see,’ the detective mused. ‘Can you remember the name of the firm you sold it to?’

  ‘Some silly name,’ Jeffrey tilted his top hat, scratched his thinking grey hair. ‘Somethin' like … yes, I remember now, Ostrich International.’

  ‘Incidentally,’ Raymomd Odell's eyes narrowed, ‘that lion in the ring tonight. It was sedated.’

  ‘Sure,’ Jeffrey dropped his gaze. ‘Begbie sees to that, he used to be a vet.’

  ‘Used to be? I thought it was “once a vet, always a vet” even if you weren't actually practicing.’

  ‘He was struck off, some illegal operations he carried out. Served time for it. But he's useful here, keeps the old animals going and mucks in generally.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Odell mused. ‘That cowboy, Buckaroo Bill, he seems to know his stuff, alright.’

  ‘He's genuine. Not a cowboy, of course, but he used to be a horse trainer. Begbie found him for us and he's proved to be the best act in the circus. Bill Porson is his
real name. If only we could have got the ostrich back here, things might have been different. Mind you,’ he added ‘,over in Amsterdam, we had to give the ostrich a shot of something to quieten it down, otherwise it would have kicked both Bill and his horse out of the ring, maybe gone berserk on the audience, too.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Jeffrey,’ Odell smiled, ‘you have been most helpful. Now, my colleagues and I will leave you in peace for an hour or two, although we may have need to return. Might I request that you keep our visit confidential?’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ the circus owner looked relieved. ‘Last thing I want is for my lot to know the cops have been around making enquiries. You know,’ he winked, ‘in this game you take on any casuals who come your way and some of them might've done things which are no concern of mine. But so long as they do the work who am I to question their private lives?’

  As they walked back across the tract of waste ground upon which the circus was situated, Raymond Odell suddenly stopped and turned. The others watched as he went over to where the horse which Porson had ridden in his act was tethered. Beside it, draped over the fence, was the lasso. Odell lifted up the length of frayed rope, examined it carefully before plucking a strand from it. He placed it carefully in his wallet and Tommy recognised only too well that hint of a smile on his chief's face.

  ‘Any clues?’ Richmond voiced his and Tommy's curiosity upon their return to the local police station although he knew only too well that he was wasting his breath.

  ‘We're slowly making progress,’ Odell replied non-committal. ‘Now, if I may have the use of the station telephone for ten minutes or so I think we might progress even further.’

  It was a quarter of an hour before Raymond Odell emerged from the police inspector’s private office.

  ‘Richmond,’ he addressed his Scotland Yard colleague, ‘did you notice, some months ago, an account in the papers about a rather daring robbery in Amsterdam?’

  ‘You mean the theft of the Tiggelovend tiara?’ Richmond grunted. ‘Interpol circulated us with the details. It was on show at the jewellers and the shop was ram-raided. The thief escaped with the tiara but there was no way such an item would be able to be offered for sale, it is too well known.’

  ‘That's the one.’ Raymomd Odell smiled. ‘It has never been recovered to this day and the Dutch police don't anticipate ever finding it. Right now it's probably sitting in some crooks private collection.’

  ‘How does that figure in our enquiries?’

  ‘Because that ostrich came from Holland,’ Odell replied. ‘And then it died in quarantine, I am informed.’

  ‘The customs officers would have noticed if the bird had been wearing the tiara! Anyway, the ostrich is dead.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Odell answered. ‘The ostrich died but a similar stud bird was purchased from Ostrich International Limited by the Masons.’

  Richmond shook his head this was all becoming too involved and unlikely for him, but he knew Odell of old. The private detective had somehow made a connection between the bird that had died and the one that had been savagely mutilated.

  ‘We're going back to Jeffrey's Circus,’ Raymond Odell announced. ‘The inspector has kindly agreed to co-operate and has delegated a couple of CID officers to accompany us. Unless I miss my guess we are dealing with desperate men.’

  This time Raymond Odell did not head directly for Jeffrey's caravan. Instead, followed by Tommy and Richmond with the CID officers bringing up the rear, he walked towards a small crudely constructed corral in which the man who dubbed himself Buckaroo Bill had just lassoed and thrown a lively calf. A second man was kneeling over the trussed animal, a hypodermic syringe in his hand. Both whirled around guiltily at the sound of footfalls.

  ‘What's going on?’ The man attempted to conceal the syringe behind his back.

  ‘I might ask you the same question,’ Odell pushed open a makeshift gate and stepped inside the enclosure. ‘I take it you must be John Begbie?’

  ‘That's me,’ the other scowled. ‘So what?’

  ‘Just that at the very least my official colleagues here may arrest you for being in possession of and administering controlled substances. I see that not only do you sedate the poor old lion but you also slow down a lively calf.’

  ‘It's in the interest of public safety,’ Begbie backed away a step.

  ‘Perhaps.’ Out of the corner of his eye Odell noticed that the other four were now inside the corral. ‘I believe both of you went on tour in Holland with the circus last July?’

  ‘That's right,’ Porson looks less convincing without his western clothing. ‘It wasn't a success.’

  ‘Neither for Mister Jeffrey nor for yourselves,’ Raymond Odell's searching gaze flicked from one to the other. ‘In fact, many thousand pounds worth of stolen property has gone missing and, it seems, will never come to light again. I refer, of course, to the famous Tiggelovend tiara.’

  ‘Never heard of it,’ Begbie growled, took a step backwards.

  ‘Most certainly you have,’ Odell saw the two CID men, with Richmond and Tommy, closing in on the vet and the self-styled cowboy. ‘In fact, you ram-raided it from an Amsterdam jewellers.’

  ‘That's rubbish,’ Porson's laugh was forced.

  ‘No,’ Raymond Odell continued, ‘you stole the tiara and that's when your problems began. You knew there was no chance of selling such a famous item intact so your prised the valuable diamonds out of it, and the crown itself is probably now residing at the bottom of a fjord. Your other problem was how to smuggle the stones back to England so you hit upon an ingenious plan. Using your veterinary skills, Begbie, you implanted the diamonds in the body of the ostrich which Jeffrey had purchased while on tour. You knew full well that the bird would have to be kept in quarantine upon your return to England but you were prepared to stick with the circus and bide your time until the ostrich was returned to Jeffrey.’

  ‘What a load of rubbish!’ Porson laughed again.

  ‘Unfortunately for yourselves,’ Odell went on, ‘Jeffrey was desperately short of money. So he sold the ostrich straight from quarantine to Ostrich International Ltd who supply breeding stock to ostrich farmers. Unfortunately, the poor bird which carried a fortune around with it died. The Masons, whom you know, purchased an almost identical bird. You contacted Ostrich International, on the pretext of wanting to purchase a fine male bird for stud purposes, and discovered that such a bird had been sold to the Masons. Naturally the firm did not tell you that the bird from quarantine had died. So you had to get the diamonds out of the Mason's bird.’

  Porson and Begbie glanced around them uneasily; the three policemen and Tommy had moved in on them.

  ‘Porson, you took a casual job at the Masons' farm to suss out the situation, and you were convinced that the stud ostrich there was the same one that you and Begbie had put the diamonds inside. By this time the feathers would have grown again over the incisions where the diamonds were implanted and you wouldn't know for certain if it was the one until you started cutting it open. Catching an ostrich is far from easy.’ Raymond Odell smiled. ‘So the other evening you went to the Masons' farm after dark and Buckaroo Bill performed this act for real and lassoed the ostrich. For your information, a strand from the frayed lariat,’ Odell pointed to the rope that dangled from Porson's grasp, ‘adhered to the feathers and I have since matched it with the rope it came from, the one you are now holding. I was also puzzled by the wounds in the ostrich; a maniac would have slashed and stabbed, but these were deep gouges and probes. I concluded that the attacker was hacking for something specific beneath the skin rather than simply inflicting a series of cruel wounds. My conversations with Ostrich International and Interpol completed my jigsaw and now …’

  Begbie and Porson sprang into action, would have dashed for the fence and tried to escape, but the detectives were too quick for them. Tommy's rugby tackle brought down Porson, whilst the CID officers leaped upon Begbie and bore him to the ground.

  From the doorway of his
battered caravan, Jeffrey watched and shook his head sadly. His touring circus would not even last until the end of the year now.

  ‘Well, I never thought a senseless act like the slashing of an ostrich would lead to the solving of an international crime,’ Richmond shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘Which just goes to show,’ Raymond Odell laughed, ‘that you never know what the outcome will be when you embark upon the most seemingly trivial of investigations. I treat them all the same initially, no detail must be overlooked, no matter how irrelevant it might seem. As they say, you never know…’

  The Werewolf Legend

  (from Graveyard Rendezvous 19)

  Do werewolves really exist?

  The legend goes back thousands of years and, as the saying goes, there is no smoke without fire.

  The werewolf is the ultimate in evil and depravity, a legendary creature which dates back to time immemorial although the word 'werewolf' is Anglo-Saxon. Many countries throughout the world have their 'were' creatures. India has its were-tigers, Africa its were-lions and were-crocodiles although the origins of the legends are lost in the mists of time.

  First, though, just what is a werewolf? It is a creature which is half-man, half-wolf, the strength and cunning of the animal taking over from the logic of the human being during the period of the full moon. A person may live an otherwise normal life, but during that terrible week of each month it reverts to the sub-human, the bloodlust uppermost in its crazed brain as it lavishes its victims mercilessly.

  As the full moon rises the change from man to beast begins. The skin becomes coarse and hair begins to grow over the entire body. The features become enlarged and distorted, powerful fangs and razor-sharp claws enable him to savage man and beast, eyes glinting redly as he stumbles across the countryside, lurking in the shadows and baying the moon frequently.