Having this morning packed a sprightly lunch of pickled starfish, I prepared to take a train to Beachy Head, to spend a peaceful day walking in the glades and brooks and copses of the South Downs, perusing my thoughts on the many untethered horrors of this sickening world.
But as I ventured out onto ------- Lane to hail a hansom, a chill drizzle started to scatter over Marylebone village market, settling upon my frock coat like leper’s piss. I scowled at the heavens and cursed any deity that could make a fruitless exercise of the preparation of brined asteroidea.
I was then that I caught a glimpse of tousled red hair, all a-flutter in the bespattered breeze. My maid Rebekah was easing her way through the afternoon crowds, a basket upon her arm… and contained within it? I did not know, for placed over it was a smart chequered coverlet. But I was sure that this was not one of the days when she would make her way up to the west end to sell pirated DVDs.
Something seemed amiss to old Augustus’ wily brain, and I endeavoured to follow her.
The flame-haired scrubber passed into a passage and I followed her at a distance, until she led me to a dank urine-stinking corner somewhere north of Baker Street. As I peered around a corner, I watched her meet a gentleman of perhaps eight feet in height. His eyes – which were situated on opposing sides of his face - swivelled and rotated in a menacing manner that reminded me of a genus of chameleon I once dissected then ate in Grimpy-Grimpy Land.
Upon greeting Rebekah, he cast his cloak across her shoulder and focused his stereoscopic vision upon her basket. She pulled aside the basket’s coverlet and removed a number of items including a woollen mitten and a gastric plug, which he took up in his huge claw. A single silken hair followed, then a copy of Metal Machine Music (by Lou Reed).
It was at this point that Augustus' investigative mind became a little bored, to tell truth, and as they continued their secretive handover of bric-a-brac (some pigeon fat… a crude pornographic sketch…blah blah) I turned around and walked up to Baker Street.
After wandering around aimlessly for a while, I climbed a drainpipe and peered into a room where a man was having his armpit inspected by a nurse.
My boredom became overwhelming and I must admit that I had a slight relapse, starting a small fire in an antiques shop near Regents Park. It built into a fine blaze within moments and I retreated to the other side of the park where I watched it go up in fine style, all burnished orange and bilberry blue. How I chortled, dear friends!
I scarpered home to find Rebekah polishing my Octon’s Aromaron as if it were no more than a speckled egg. I will get to the bottom of this moral turpitude under my own roof! Bark!
