Suddenly, he felt his feet slipping in the snow. He attempted to regain his balance, but the slippery surface offered no chance of a secure foothold. His legs shot from beneath him, and there was an ear splitting crack of bone on tarmac as his head met with the pathway. Somebody screamed as the huddled, lifeless figure of the old miser gathered momentum on the steep incline. Faster and faster it slid, until it finally hit the concrete kerbstone and shot into the air. It seemed to hang, suspended in space, and then there was a terrific splinter of wood, a rumbling of soil and stone, finally terminating in a shocked silence among the horrified onlookers.
The plump vicar was the first on the scene, producing a small pocket torch from the beneath his flowing robes, and shining the beam down through the splintered planks into the yawning grave beneath. In a yellow circle of light he saw the huddled form of Alexander Strange lying there, his head twisted at a grotesque angle, half buried beneath the pile of excavated soil which his falling body had brought down with it.
Perhaps it was an illusion, a figment of an imagination fired by the horrific scene which lay below him, but the vicar fancied that he saw a figure standing on the opposite side of the grave, a very ordinary man dressed in an ill fitting suit who smiled and nodded his head in a satisfied manner. However, when the clergyman shone his torch in that direction again there was nothing to be seen except softly falling snowflakes, and an impenetrable blackness beyond.
The Case of the Ostrich Slasher
(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
