Mrs. Rebby and the Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Sponges

Confessions of a Former P.I. - Part Two

The lampid air hung like a heavy grey cloak over the lawn... Prada, I think. Something expensive and Italian: I can't remember the exact details - after all, it was 5 a.m. in the morning, and the urgency of Mrs. Rebby's telephone call didn't leave time for morning coffee... besides, I'd run out of the stuff, and even after waiting outside the corner store for two hours just in case they decided to open early, still no joy. I figured I'd just have to kick off this case blind.

Opening my eyes helped a little bit but it was still pretty dark as I drove through the gates of Mrs. Rebby's estate. I guess I should have asked her to open them first. But this was no time for pleasantries. The woman was in a hysterical state and no amount of face slapping was about to calm her down. Sure, I'm old fashioned, but I knew how to be sensitive - I knew what women wanted: tea. That and a nice cool face wash. Guess I'd forgotten how hot my tea was when I threw it in her face. Like I said, I hadn't had my coffee that morning, or my tea. She didn't appreciate the gesture - I could tell this was gonna be one tough cookie.

"So, it's Mrs. Rebby, is it?"

She padded herself down - "It was Mrs. Rebby. My husband died a month ago."

I pretended to write something in my notepad. Little did she know I actually was taking down her comments, word for word.
"Mr. Rebby - your husband - owner of the largest sponge company on the West Coast?"
"Yes. Most of his business came from wholesale to various retailers, chemists, carwashes and the like. Every last bit was above the board."
"Still, he did alright out of it?"
"I suppose you could say that."
"And you did alright out of it too."
"What are you implying, Mr. O'Malley?"
"Who? ...Oh, that's my name. Yeah, what am I implying?"
"Well -"
"No, don't answer, that's a rhetorical question."
"Oh"
"I'm implying that you know more than you're telling me. Where were you on the night of your husband's murder?"
"I didn't say it was murder!"
"You didn't have to. It's written on that placard over there."
"Oh, you mean the one that says "My husband was murdered by the Government because he wouldn't give in to pr-
"Just hold on a minute there, Mrs. Rebby, I'm trying to write and talk and listen at the same time, it's quite hard. I'm still back on "I didn't say it was murder!" ...
...

... g-i-v-e space i-n space t-o, okay continue please"
"He wouldn't give in to pressure. You see, my husband had a secret."
"Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs. Rebby?"
"No! What are you talking about?"
"Sorry... just, that's what usually happens by this point... I mean, not to me, but I hear it happens. That's what all the other P.I.'s say"
"Oh, don't listen to them. They're probably lying, just to make themselves look good."
"Sure, sure, it's just that, well, you're a very attractive twenty-two year old"
"Mr. O'Malley, please! My husband just died!"
"And how old was he?"
"Ninety-eight. But I didn't marry him for his millions of dollars. And even if I did it doesn't matter anymore. The City Council has made sure of that. I called you here this morning because something terrible has just happened. You see, about a month before he died, my husband stumbled upon a horrible conspiracy. You know how short the city has been on water lately: with the total water ban, business was starting to take a turn for the worse. We had plenty invested in the stock market to tide us over, but it was hardly the most prosperous time of our lives. And then some bigwigs from Town Hall approached him with an offer he couldn't refuse."
"But he did, right?"
"Yes, well, it turns out they were wrong on that point."
"Do you know what the offer was?"
"No, he never told me. I suppose deep down he never trusted me. That and the fact that he'd lost all ability to form cogent sentences about two years before I met him."
"Are you familiar with the term "golddigger", Mrs. Rebby?"
"I resent the implication, Mr. O'Malley!"
"What implication? 7 across - 10 letters, third letter is "l", clue is 'someone who digs for gold' "
"Please listen to me, Mr. O'Malley! My life might be at stake!"
"Now you listen to me, little lady. None of this 'Mr. O'Malley' stuff - call me Eugene. And another thing: I take my crosswords very seriously. They help me think. I need to think right now. You need to think too. I want you to think very hard, and try and remember why you called me here today."
"I've been trying to tell you that since you get here, you mo-"

At this point I think I'll slip back into my previous style of narration. She told me how she'd awoken, around 1 in the morning, to the cacophony of a hundred sponges being carefully packed into felt-lined bags, with cotton balls (she was certain about the cotton balls) layered on top. When I asked what she was doing packing sponges at 1 in the morning, she swore again and said it wasn't her, it was a shady character -- with a scar on his upper-left earlobe, grey-green slacks, spats from Hal Burtington's Specialist Shoes, and a slight French accent, probably from Marseilles or the neighbouring provinces -- but unfortunately she hadn't been able to get a good look at him.
"Why would anyone want to steal sponges?" I asked. She then preceeded to tell me how in his final years, her husband had been experimenting with an invention that would revolutionize the world of sponges - the extra super ultra absorbent "Spongeonmaster", capable of soaking up 1000-times more liquid than the best sponges on the market, which incidently were his as well. These same sponges - fresh from his personal workshop - had been stolen this very morning.

But by who? And what did the council have to do with it? What deal had the toughs from Town Hall tried to force Mr. Rebby into signing? A water crisis, a money-hungry widow, an invention for ultra-absorbent sponges, and then the prototypes suddenly disappear in the middle of the night... It was starting to sound eerily familiar, like the end of a chapter, like the "to be continued" thing they use in the picture shows, like the story was just gonna stop all of a sudden and you'd have to wait a whole week before finding out what happens next.


Next Week - The Mayor's Dark Secret!

"Danger" is my middle name... as is "Bob"

Confessions of a former P.I. - Part One

Lemme get straight to the point: I ain't no lounge pianist who ducks for cover under his elephant-tusks every time a brawl flares up, ya shee? When you've been in this line of work for 25 years, ya learn to cope with the occasional rumble. Which is a good thing, cos more often than not it's you what's being rumbled with. Well, so, I lost an eye, an arm and my good right leg (that is to say it had been good up 'till I slammed the car door on it yesterday) - but I ain't scared o' no drug mules, triads, floosies or whatsits. I seen 'em all come and go in my time, but good ol' Walter B. Duffield is still here... that's my neighbour, is Walter. I, Eugene Bob O'Malley, have also been here all this time that Walter and I have been here also.*

It was the summer of twenty-o-six, the hottest winter on record, possibly because it was summer, and City Hall was in panic mode. Not two months before they'd done the unthinkable, and the citizens of this fair state (myself included) weren't a bit happy.

Prohibition! They declared the town DRY. We might have seen it coming. Restrictions had already been in place all that year, and probably the year before if anyone could be bothered remembering, and now it had come to this - a total water ban. The dams were empty, they said, there was nothing we could do. The usual loonies and crackpots suggested pumping more in from Townsville, but I knew the bigwigs in City Hall would never let that happen. It was all about power, ya shee? Whatever precious stocks they had left, hidden away somewhere, well, they were hanging on to them for dear life - OR DEAR DEATH!**

But we'll get to that later. First, I figure you better get wise to certain facts and figures about life back in those days. No bathing, no showering, no swimming, no splashing, no drinking, no washing, no flushing. Just imagine that: a total ban on water in all its forms. People weren't even allowed to sweat!

It was a smelly place. A pretty smelly, stagnent kind of place to be. There was only one place you could go... well, actually there were hundreds but you get the point.^

That's right kids, the SPEAKEASY: hot jazz and smooth liquor were no place to be seen in those days - all anyone cared about was the chance to sneak off into a little room somewhere and get sprayed with a little water bottle. People only went to rock concerts if they could get into the front row! Science experiments on condensation were suddenly packed with arts students, while excursions into the nearby desert suddenly became a heck of a lot more popular, on account of the rumoured existence of oasis after oasis which would suddenly appear about 3 or 4 days into the journey.

It was a mad time. A mad, crazy time. A crazy, mad, mad stupid time.^^

And when times get mad, crazy, and/or stupid, it's a fine life for a crook looking to make a little moolah on the side. And by "little" I mean a whole darn lot!

So when Mrs. Rebbey 'phoned at 8a.m. one morning telling me someone had stolen her entire Unused Sponge collection, I knew something fishy was happening.

(Next Week: Mrs. Rebbey and the Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Sponges)

* Eugene: please rephrase this - Ed.

** This isn't the Courier Mail, please make it less stupid - Ed.

^ No we don't. - Ed.

^^ You're stupid. - Ed.

A gift.

I think Phil's post spent just about enough time on the top part of this blog so now it's time for me to once again grace this 'ere blog with my presents(sic) or even my present presence... so this post would be my presence's present's present, which is of course is my presence. Confused? Me to (sic). And I think that's an important way to begin any reading of philnsmiz.blogspot.com (hmmm a shameless plug for the site you're already on. But it's a darn sight better than any other darn site). Any writings from, or to, the two of us, are too likely to cause you great pain. Two for the price of one, one might say. One time, I won(der) ed if wonned was the past tense version of the verb won. Ok, enough play with homophones... time for me to talk about gifts.

So. The word gift has many meanings. It can be a rare talent or ability, an item or object that you give to someone. Or in some cases (ie. where your presence is your present) both simultaneously. I'd like to talk about the former. But instead I'll talk about the latter. The former being much too serious a topic to broach this late at night and in this particular forum.

Gifts - how do you choose them? when is it the thought that counts? How do you carefully enquire about the whereabouts* of the receipt for your friends carefully purchased token of their undying friendship. I don't know. I'm not an expert on gift etiquette... although I do know that you should never look a gift horse in the mouth. Of course I'd generally say that you should never look any horse in the mouth too closely for fear that it may bite** your nose off. That expression makes a lot of sense outside the realm of everyday logic. If someone gave me a horse I'd want to know if it was going to respond well to the bit (that is the bit of something that goes in the horse's bite). The only way to tell that without riding it is to look at the mouth and see what sort of condition it's in. Looking a gift horse in the mouth seems a perfectly reasonable course of action to me. I wouldn't want any wild horses roaming around in the top paddock... or in fact in the middle, lower, or bottom paddocks for that matter. Wild horses belong around wild oats. Wild oats are of course good for making wild porridge. Hippies will tell you that there are other ingredients that will make porridge wild. I'm told a dab of lavendar will improve the flavour no end. But then, everything needs an end. For example this post needed an end a long time ago. But it was all a means to an end really. Only it didn't mean much. Confused yet? Boy I hope so.

* Not so interesting footnote - if whereabouts had an i it would join a rare club of words with all the vowels represented - facetious of course holds a special place due to the fact that it contains all the vowels in alphabetical order. Spaceious would too, if it was a word.
** For many years I was terribly confused about the word bite - I always thought the Great Australian Bight was named because it looked like someone had bitten a chunk out of the continent. But that's not the case. However, night is always night, and never nite. Unless it is knight... and if it is knight time there better be a knight riding in on their horse...or else.

That bwessed awangement, that dweam wifin a dweam.

I feel like an old man.

Old, grumpy, brandishing my walking stick as I march up and down the canned soup and condiments aisle, recalling the Battle of Britain with each twist of the knobbled cane in my hand, reminiscing the old "Thrust! Parry! Lunge!" routine of my public school days in Eaton* as I send those little twats we call the Under 70s sprawling into the Campbells Cream of Chunky, like so many grounded Luftwaffle pilots. Or is it Luftwaffer? I can't remember: further proof of my identity (that is to say, if I can't remember who I am then at least I know I'm old).

But haste I now to the reason for these strange and leaden musings:**
Today, an old school chum and I were discussing the presumedly impending nuptials of a couple of old school friends - she from our own (Eaton), he from another. As my friend and I discussed this blissful couple, I was reminded of this fact: they're not the first! No, many from my circle of friends of highschool years have already tied the knots to the shoes they wore on their wedding days (and many more besides), and I am as yet only 21 years old! In fact a few said couples are already up to the 2nd or 3rd wedding anniversary (and are, if nothing else, statistical survivors).

Now this in and of itself is enough to make anyone feel rather old, owing to the fact that marriage brings with it a certain expectation of maturity, responsibility, commitment to mutual welfare (so we can assume that George W. Bush is in a defacto with Laura?) ^; the form of traits normally associated with people of old age. But, as we well know, husband and wife kissing, "I Do" and mini spring rolls floating in the Sprite someone didn't bother to drink because heck it's a bar tab and it's not like I need to drink my money's worth: THAT is just a wedding.

MARRIAGE is an entirely different thing, to paraphrase Steve Martin. It means, for one thing, the loss of time. And I don't mean in the sense that married couples suddenly become a lot busier than they were prior to Our Lady of Mount Franklin At 3pm on the 21st of October. I mean in the sense that they seem to enter an entirely different dimension of time itself: a time-space continuum into which only married couples are bade enter, and within which only married-couples events occur. Although, exceptions do exist. For example, apparently said His and Her, though not yet even engaged, have been busying themselves with dinner parties hosted by our already-married couples from school: a process of inauguration and indoctrination, I presume.

And it is the thought of dinner parties that ages me. Not that I haven't been to any before, but that a very distinct image forms in my mind at the thought of young married couples, or indeed any married couples, meeting up for dinner.
The image runs thus: on one side of the room, the men stand talking about sport, the weather, and how much money they're making per 50 hour week. Wolf down a canape. On the other side of the room, the women laze about on recliners, occassionally sitting forward intent on catching gossip which need not be whispered since everyone knows about Gertrude's unwanted pregnancy already.*** Meanwhile the men laugh raucously because someone mentioned the chicken breasts they ate for dinner last night with the emphasis on the second morpheme. And at this the women titter (hehe) and say in loud, long, deliberate phrases how awful their terrible husbands are, and everyone has a good laugh, and then you flash forward 30 or 40 years, and there they are again, and the men stand in one corner talking about sport, the weather, and how much money they're making per 60 hour week. Choke on a canape. On the other side, the women lean forward intently listening to whatever it is Ellie just said, only to be disappointed when they discover she was just asking if anyone wanted ice, and meanwhile the men laugh raucously because someone made a joke about breasts 30 years ago "and it was pretty funny at the time I recall", at which the women roll their eyes and knock back the rest of their shandies, and they say in loud, long, deliberate phrases how terrible their husbands are, and everyone sighs and wonders how life ever passed them by so quickly.

I suppose it won't be so bad. So long as my future wife lets my future self terrorize minimum-wage Jimmy and all his little friends down at the local grocers as I pretend I'm a P.O.W. in full flight from the Laftwuffer...

... well, one needs one's dreams.





*N.B. In the UK, public schools are the equivalent of our private schools.
** I've been reading a bit of Edgar Allen Poe lately.
^ Ouch! Social commentary at it is best.
***And just in case you DIDN'T know, it turns out it was indigestion.

Esquekafka

Well it's been a while since I posted anything, or since Smiley posted anything of value, so I thought I'd write a little divertissement about 20th Century Literature. You see, in a blog I posted some time ago, I made reference to the movie Annie Hall, moreover the fact that many people who know nothing about Kafka would call it "Kafkaesque".

What I didn't tell you was that I also know nothing about Kafka, and had originally been planning to describe the movie as Kafkaesque myself, until it struck me that it would sound much more like I knew what I was talking about if I pretended to know a lot about Kafka by saying that people who know nothing about Kafka would call it "Kafkaesque".

I know. I'm a horrible horrible liar. Thus stricken with a guilty conscience, I curtailed my Warpoling (well, I would have if I was reading Warpole) and made haste to the nearest library, whereupon I proceeded to borrow out the only Kafka available, a little novel tentatively entitled The Trial (I say "tentatively" because of a spelling mistake. I meant to just write "entitled" but started with a "t" by mistake and thought I might as well go with the flow).

Anyway, I recently arrived at the conclusion of the novel, and I can safely say that, while people who know nothing about Kafka will still call Annie Hall "Kafkaesque", so too in fact might people who do know something about Kafka and his works.

See, if you sum up the story of Annie Hall, it's like this:

Man gets girlfriend for no reason

Man loses girlfriend
Man gets girlfriend back because of spider the size of a Buick

Man loses girlfriend again cos he's a neurotic jerk.

And if you sum up the story of The Trial, it's like this:

Man gets arrested for no reason

Man gets lawyer
Man loses lawyer because of spider the size of a Buick*

Man gets executed cos he's a neurotic jerk.

See how similar they are? Not at all. I recommend both, although The Trial is pretty heavy going. Frustrating, but that's intentional. You never find out why this guy is arrested (in the end I think the point is that life is a trial, that you're guilty just for being alive), but at the same time, he's such a pompous, arrogant egotist that it's almost a relief when they finally give him the chop.

That's it. That's my post for today. It's over. (What, were you expecting something funny? You should know better by now)

*This is a lie. Unless one takes "spider the size of a Buick" as a metaphor for the oppresive weight of a legal system within which even lawyers of the defendant do nothing to help their client, and against which the Protagonist rails (by his losing/firing of the lawyer in his employ).

time for a little bit of Q&A

I would like to answer Adam Herd's question from a previous post.

He asks: "is that here metaphysical?"

No.

The Sitcom

Audience participation time - please answer the following questions:

If Smiley and myself were to write a sitcom ("Sitar Communism"), what should it be about?

Who is the main character?

Who are his/her sidekicks?

Who are his/her foes?

What is the title of the sitcom?

What happens in the first episode?

What would happen in the last episode?

What is the catchphrase of the main character?

Where is the sitcom set?

What is the style of the sitcom?

OUR challenge (and I haven't told Smiley this yet but he'll probably read it here anyway) will be to take this information and to ACTUALLY write an episode of a sitcom. But we won't just pick the best idea and write that: we're going to pick ALL the ideas (that's right, ALL of them) and combine them in one UBER episode, all within one convenient timeframe of TWENTY one minutes. ! .