“Got you, ma’am,” I said.
“Now look at this.” The dame spread out a paper on my desk. It was a pretty big paper. More a broadsheet really, or a double tabloid, which is very much the same as a broadsheet, or possibly just a bit smaller.
“What do you have there, ma’am?” I asked, with a great deal of respect in my voice.
“God’s last will and testament.”
“Whoa!” said I. “And might I take a look?”
“You may.”
I examined the last will and testament of God. Now, I didn’t know just what to expect. Well, you wouldn’t really, would you? I mean, I might have expected a lot of legal fol-de-rol and perhaps some archangels getting the odd knick-knacks and possibly even me being given all the lands to the south in honour of my services to crime detection. But this was short and sweet. Well, at least it was short.
To my son Colin, I bequeath my beloved planet Earth. To my dear wife, Eartha, the rest of the Universe.
Signed GOD
“And that’s it?” said I. “It’s, well, it’s brief.”
“Very brief,” said Eartha.
“But surely, if I recall my scripture,” I said, “it clearly states that the meek are supposed to inherit the Earth.”
Eartha made the kind of face that Joseph Merrick made a living out of. “It’s my Earth!” She shouted, rattling my ceiling fan and damn near having the remnants of my hat off. “He gave it to me as a birthday present.”
“Ma’am,” said I, as I straightened my flambeaued fedora. “Ma’am, please, surely now God is dead, you are in complete control of everything. I mean, you just sorted out the weather with a wave of your lily-white hand. You can do whatever you want, can’t you? I mean, you could just zap the will and forget all about it?”
“No, Mr Wormwood, I can not do that. There are protocols to be observed. Even God had to abide by certain rules. Now I want you to investigate this, Mr Wormwood. I want you to find out who put the hit on my husband and what this will is all about.”
“Ma’am,” I said. “With all due respect. I do know my business and in cases such as these, it’s usually the person who has the most to gain from the death of the subject who’s the guilty party. I don’t wish to cause any offence here. But I reckon your son Colin is in the frame for this one.”
“If that is the case,” She said, “then so be it and I will deal with Colin myself. But I want proof, Mr Wormwood. Absolute proof. I want to know the truth about what happened to my husband and why. And you are going to find that truth for me, aren’t you, Mr Wormwood?”
“Ma’am,” I said, “you can rely on me.”
“Yes, I know that I can. Because if you fail to deliver, within one week from today, I shall visit upon you such torment that even the devil himself will turn his face away from the horror. Do I make myself absolutely clear?”
“Absolutely, ma’am,” said I. And boy, did I need the toilet.
She didn’t leave in a puff of smoke, or anything fancy like that. She just kind of got off my chair and dragged Her big butt out of my door. No thank yous, no fond farewells and no sweet goodbye kisses.
Off She went and that was that and I was left alone.
Alone!
“Er, Barry,” I called. “Barry, my dear little pea green buddy. Where are you, Barry, my friend?”
In my head was silence. Stillness. Hush.
“Barry,” I called. “Where are you, Barry?”
In my head was quietude. Tranquillity. Dead calm.
“Barry, dear Barry. Where are you?”
“Sorry, chief. I was having a nap. Have I missed anything?”
“Barry! You little …” I pummelled at my skull. “You traitorous cur, you lowdown dirty …”
“Leave it out, chief. Stop. Oh ouch! Oh ow!”
“You could have warned me, you lowdown double-dealing …”
“Chief, what could I do? I—”
“You let me walk in here and insult God’s widow and now I’m in deeper doo than a coprophile in a cow manure Jacuzzi.”
“You’ve got seven days, chief.”
“Seven days? She knew, Barry. She knew that God was dead. She turns up in my office less than half an hour after He gets it. And She’s even got His will with Her. The will that clearly implicates Her son.”
“Seems like an open and shut case, chief. One that even you could solve.”
“Barry, you little green golly. She knew. Do you hear what I’m saying?”
“I think you’re saying She knew, chief.”
“That is what I’m saying. She was here and She knew and She wasn’t even concerned. God is dead and She doesn’t give a damn. And why, Barry, why?”
“Well, chief …”
“There’s no other explanation. I didn’t get to be the best in the business by missing the most obvious clues. She was here. She knew. She had the will with Her. The will implicates Her son. She did it. Case closed.”
“Well, not exactly, chief.”
“Not exactly, Barry? How much more exactly would you care for?”
“Well, chief, exactly how She knew might help.”
“She knew, because She ordered the hit.”
“Er, no, chief. She knew because I told Her.”
There was silence once again. But it wasn’t just in my head this time.
“You told Her?” I fairly roared. I did. I kid you not. “You told Her? You told Her?”
“Calm yourself down, chief. I had to. I was only doing it to save you from Her terrible wrath, if She’d found out some other way. You’d have never got away with dressing up as a Muslim. I had to come clean with Her. Explain that it wasn’t your fault and that you’d find out who’d done it.”
“But She did it.”
“No, chief, I’ve just explained that. She didn’t do it.”
“Then it was Colin.”
“Well, chief, I do agree that he looks a likely candidate. And he is a real bad lot. But whether he’d really have the guts to top his own father, I don’t know about that.”
I dropped into my chair, dragged open my desk drawer and brought out the Old Bedwetter. At times like these, when the going gets rough, I find that a slug of—
“Don’t start that again, chief. And advertising B. K. Flamers. How low will you stoop in the cause of an easy buck?”
“Barry, do you realize the trouble I’m in here?”
“Of course I do, chief. We’re in this together, aren’t we?”
“Yeah, right!” I took a hefty slug.
“If you go down, I go down, chief. I only get one shot at this Holy Guardian game and if I foul up, I’m on the celestial compost heap. I do have your best interests at heart. And I do want you to solve this case. Think of it, chief. This is the Big One. Woodbine brings the murderer of God to justice. How could there ever be a bigger case than that?”
I nodded thoughtfully. And I did it with style. I mean sure, my hat was in sodden tatters and my trenchcoat gone to ruination. My socks were smouldering and I had third degree burns over 60 per cent of my body. I was up to my neck in the deep brown stuff and had just seven days to solve the crime of the eternity, knowing that if I didn’t, I would become toast in a million ways more than one. But like I say, I nodded thoughtfully.
And I did it with style.
Now there are some times when you have to sit and think. Mull things over. Cogitate. Employ your mind. Cerebrate. Conceptualize. Contemplate. Commune with your inner self.
And I guess that’s all OK if you’re one of those tormented-soul detectives with a drink problem and a broken marriage, who’s had some big trauma in his childhood and is searching after his feminine side, or however that load of old toot always goes.