Oh Stadium of Withdean, high perch'd on lofty crag, A stony fortress hewn for love of sport Where land-bound winds from stormy oceans drag At lichen'd walls, where nesting crows consort. Yea doth this bastion, this architectual whim, When fill'd with acolytes of ath-el-etes Rejoice with cries exhalted, from lovers of the gym And cost both arm and leg for decent seats. I cannot be having with poetry, myself. I mean, what is poetry? Song lyrics without the musical accompaniment, when you come right down to it. I mean, folk singers, on the whole, are pretty rubbish, but at least they have taken the trouble to learn how to play the guitar. And how can you really tell a good poem from a bad poem? I think they are supposed to rhyme, mostly, but even if they do rhyme, does that make them any good? But then, what did I know about poetry? Not very much, is the answer to that. But then, why should I? Because I was a detective. I was Lazlo Woodbine, private eye.
And I can tell you, I was experiencing some difficulties with this. I was having a real job keeping in the idiom. And I was in real trouble being at the Withdean Stadium. Lazlo did not work stadiums. The office, bars, alleyways and rooftops, yes, but not stadiums.
But I was young and had my health and was up for inspiration. And so I stood in one of the corridors that led down to the pitch. A corridor that was open to the sky at intervals. A corridor that would have passed for an alleyway any day of the week, with the possible exception of Tuesdays.
I lounged against the wall, sporting my trenchcoat and fedora and smoking a Woodbine (nice touch, I thought) and occasionally patting at the item that made my poacher's pocket bulge. The item was my pistol. Naturally, I did not possess the trusty Smith and Wesson favoured by Laz, and even if I had, I would not have dared to carry it. You can get arrested for something like that and I had no Masonic connections.
What I did have, however, was an air pistol. It did not possess the clout to bring down an arch-villain, but it could make a decent dent in a seagull at more than thirty paces.
And so I lounged and patted and smoked and looked cool.
And then a chap in a white groundskeeper's coat came along and told me to move.
'I am here upon official business,' I told him. 'Security.' And I flashed him one of Fangio's beer mats. 'Just act as if you have not seen me.'
'Move along, you twat,' said he, in a real peasouper of a Scottish accent.
'No,' I said. 'You fail to grasp the subde nuances of acting as if you have not seen me.' 'If you dinna move, I'll call fer security.'
'I am security.' And this time I flashed an origami dog, which I had created through skilful folding of cigarette papers.
'Is that a spaniel?' the Scottish groundskeeper asked, adding, 'Hoots mon,' to fine effect. I tapped at my nose. 'Mum is the word,' I said.
'I'm away to fetch my knobkerrie,' said the grounds-keeper, 'and should I return to find y'here, I'll set about y' as m' forefathers set about the Sassenachs at Bannockburn.'
'Then I will have to shoot you dead,' I replied, patting at my pocket bulge. 'It is nothing personal. I am not a racist, or anything.' The Scottish groundskeeper looked me up and down. 'Do you know anything about croquet?' I asked him. 'It's pish,' he said. 'Not a fan, then?'
'Dinna get me wrong,' he replied. 'It's a Scottish game, after all.' 'It never is,' I said.
'Och, laddie.' The groundskeeper threw back his ginger-haired head and laughed a highland ha-ha-ha, exposing a crop of blackened teeth that had clearly never known the joys of Colgate. 'D' y' never read books?' he asked. 'The Scots invented everything – the Thermos flask, the television set, the Venetian blind, the Irish jig, the Norwegian wood, the Dutch cap, the French letter-' 'The Jewish New Year?' I suggested.
'And that. Also the Welsh harp, Kentucky Fried Chicken, New York, New York-' 'It's a wonderful town.' 'The Greek Tragedy, the Roman Holiday and the Turkish Delight. Not to mention the American Pie.' 'The American Pie?' 'I told y' not to mention that.'
And oh, how we laughed. For the old ones are always the best.
'So how does croquet work, exactly? I asked. 'I really do not understand the game.' 'Och, 'tis simple. Listen while I explain.'
And he went on to do so. And so I shall explain it to you. Croquet apparently originated in the highlands of Scotland, where poor crofters used it as a means of settling disputes. Which generally involved peat, heather, sheep, long-horned cattle, who had been knocking whom about with claymores and someone called Dear Annie, who was the fairest of the isles.
A croquet team normally consists of four men or women, or some combination thereof, although the American WCF (World Croquet Federation) field six-man sides and allow the underpass rule, which is outlawed in Kilmarnock.
Each four-man team, and only two teams play at a time (although the natives of Papua New Guinea, who took the world tide twice in the nineteen forties, allow three teams to play simultaneously, and they also allow the side-swipe-no-takers offside rule, which is punishable by death in Falkirk) consists of a captain, a nackman, a cream-dealer and a fourth man known only as the Shady. The original name for a croquet mallet was a McGregor, after the legendary Rob Roy McGregor, but was renamed the Mallet (after Lord Timothy Mallet of Marlborough) as part of the Suppression of Annoying Highlanders Act 1736. At which time any person calling a Mallet a McGregor could have his lands confiscated by the crown, himself hanged, drawn and quartered and dug into the king's rose garden at Kew. The original name for the ball was a bollock. But as to why this was changed, the groundsman admitted ignorance.
The object of the game is to knock the bollock with the McGregor – or Mallet – through a series of hoops, which are correctly termed the Hoops of McVenus and represent either the female sexual organ or the Great Arch of Heaven from which the Celtic Goddess Danu plucked the star-stuff from which She fashioned the Earth. 'Or least it's some pish to do with womenfolk', to quote the groundskeeper.
'There are thirteen hoops, as there are thirteen months in the year and thirteen spots upon a dice. The-' 'You are making all this up,' I said to the groundskeeper. 'Damn right,' said that man, 'y' Sassenach twat.' 'What time does the match start?' 'Start?' said he. 'It's almost finished.'
And I should have guessed, really, what with all the deafening cheers that were coming from the stands. And the broken bodies of injured players being carried past me on stretchers. And the reserves jogging by to replace them, crossing themselves as they did so.
'Who are the Benedictine Bears playing in the final game?' I asked the groundskeeper, who had fallen into fits of drunken mirth* and seemed on the point of collapse. * For Scotsmen are known to enjoy a drink. 'Glasgow Rangers,' he managed to say.
I looked up and down the 'alleyway', but apart from the groundskeeper and myself it was otherwise deserted. I drew out my trusty air pistol and did unto the groundskeeper what Mr Rune did unto cabbies with his very own stout stick.
Two stretcher-bearers appeared from the ground end of the 'alleyway', bearing another bloodied body. They stepped carefully over the fallen groundskeeper. 'Is Father Ernetti still on the pitch?' I asked them.
'He's responsible for this,' said one of the stretcher-bearers, nodding to the bloodied body. 'Now stand aside, please, we have to get this chap into the back of a Royal Mail van.'
I took myself to the end of the 'alleyway' and peered out at the sunlit pitch. And I do have to say that what with all the carnage going on down there, it put me somewhat in mind of the Games of Ancient Rome, the glory days of sport, with lions and gladiators and Caesar giving the old thumbs-down from the royal box while munching lark's noses and being given a Swedish swallow (which the Scottish probably invented) by a slave girl.
And there was Father Ernetti, in the thick of it, giving as good as he got and better and bringing his blessing-finger into play before dispatching an opponent.
Beneath the shade of my fedora's brim, I surveyed the crowd as best I could. Was he out there somewhere, the evil Count Otto, ready to strike? With the height of him and his long black beard, he would have to be a master of disguise to avoid recognition. By me. The detective.
Well, if he was there, I could not see him. And so I lounged in the 'alleyway' and enjoyed the closing moments of the match. The scores were even up on the big board – six hundred and sixty-five points each. If Father Ernetti could not whack his bollock through the last Hoop of McVenus before the ref. blew his whistle, there was every chance of it going into extra time, possibly even ending in a penalty hoopout.
I glanced up once more to the big scoreboard. The final seconds were ticking away upon the big digital clock. It was an early precursor of those liquid-crystal-display jobbies that were soon to become all the rage. Its internal workings involved a small boy with a skill for counting seconds and a deft hand for slotting up a numbered card. Thirty seconds left of the match time. And a little twinkle.
I did the old double-take, as Laz himself would probably have done, but in a more prosaic manner. What was that little twinkle? I delved into my trenchcoat and brought out Mr Rune's brass telescope, the one through which he had viewed Captain Bartholomew Moulsecoomb's pirate galleon during the Lansdowne Lioness adventure. I had taken quite a shine to it, and when the opportunity had presented itself for me to acquire it for my own professional use, I had taken up this presented opportunity with gusto.
I put the telescope to my eye and did focusings. And there I spied, upon the rooftop up above the big scoreboard, a crouching figure clad in black and peering through a telescopic sight.
A telescopic sight that was mounted upon a very long rifle indeed.
'Oh my God,' I said to none other than myself. 'A sniper.' And I angled my spyglass from his rifle to the pitch. He was aiming for Father Ernetti.
And I confess that at that moment, I did not know what to do. Cause a distraction? Run on to the pitch? I could rip off all my clothes and streak. Streaking was all the rage nowadays. Folk did it all the time, at football grounds and race meetings, in supermarkets, in cinemas (although no one noticed these streakers much).
Lazlo Woodbine never streaked, I told myself, although he did once take off all his clothes in The Blonde in the Burberry Body Bag (A Lazlo Woodbine Thriller). But that had been to display his regimental tattoo* to a dame that inevitably done him wrong.
But I was in serious trouble here. My air pistol did not have the range or the requisite ballistic capabilities to bring down a sniper. And I did not know how to fly a Mustang.
And my chances of ever starring in a Broadway musical were, to say the least, remote. So I would have to come up with something else.
Or in this case, it seemed, I would not, because the ref blew his whistle and the entire crowd in the stadium rose to its collective feet and cast its collective headwear into the air. Which somewhat obscured the sniper's view and allowed the good Father Ernetti to leave the field of play unshot and head off to the changing rooms. Probably for oranges, a pep talk from his manager and a Hail Mary Haka before engaging in extra time. Which gave me some extra time.
I headed off up the 'alleyway' in search of a stairway or something.
Looking back on all this now, I probably would have been better going directly to Father Ernetti's changing room and informing him that there was a rooftop sniper intending to 'take him out'. But I figured (well, in retrospect, I suppose it must have been what I figured at the time) that it was not the way that Laz did business. Laz always went for the final rooftop confrontation.
And it never failed him once. In one hundred and thirty-two best-selling thrillers.
I steeled myself to do what must be done, and fell into genre to do it. The alleyway was colder than the heart of an errant wife. My footsteps echoed hollow as a hooker's moan of passion. *Fosdyke's Flying Tigers. Woodbine was a Mustang pilot during WWII (as opposed to WWF) where he'd served in the South Pacific. And later starred in the stage version of The Blonde in the Burberry Body Bag when it became a musical and was first brought to Broadway.
But a man must do what a man must do to save another's life. And a stylish trenchcoat's never out of fashion.
'No,' I said to myself, with more snafu than a kamikaze catamite at a coprophiliacs' convention. 'This is not the time for poetry. This is time for action.'
And I found myself in the stadium's bar, which was filling up with thirsty sports fans. I elbowed my way between two who did not look particularly psychotic and called out to the barman.
'Which way to the scoreboard?' I called. 'I need to get up there in a hurry.' 'Would you mind doing that in verse for me? And I'll serve you with alacrity,' said the barman. 'Only I have recently converted from the Tadpole of Dyslexia to the Church of Poetic Pronouncement, and I now only communicate in rhyme.' 'Fangio,' I said. 'It is you.'
'Was that iambic pentameter?' asked the barman. 'Or was it a haiku?' 'It could be either, I do not know. I need the stairs, I have to go.' 'Very good,' said the barman. 'A fine piece of verse. It could have been better. But I have heard worse. 'Are you a practising Pronouncist yourself?' 'What are you doing behind the bar? You have a ticket. And also a scar.'* * Where I had whacked him the previous day with the chewing-fat bowl. 'I'm most impressed sir, A pint would it be? We've draught BP Super Or plain G and 'I.'
'What are you doing behind the bar?' I asked the versifying barkeep.
'In confidence,' said Fangio, 'working a bit of a flanker. The barman in residence, Colonel Mortimer (the best shot in the Carolinas) had to pop upstairs upon some pressing business. He bunged me fifty quid cash to fill in for him. Damn, none of that rhymed, did it? There once was a barman called Mortimer, Who-' 'Fange, this is serious business. Which way did he go?'
'Who went up the stairs for a shortener. No, that doesn't make any sense, does it? But do you think it matters? I can't be having with poetry, myself. I mean, what is poetry? Song lyrics without musical-'
I reached across the bar counter and grabbed Fangio by the throat. Which did not go down particularly well with all the sports fans who were crying out for drink.
'Unhand that barman, mister,' said one – a Cockney, by the look of his vest and braces. 'We want serving here.' 'This is serious,' I said. 'This is a matter of life and death.' 'They always say that,' said a lady in a straw hat. 'Who do?' asked the wearer of the vest and braces.
'Vegetarians,' said the lady. 'The bane of my existence, they are. Always hovering around the meat counter in Sainsbury's when you're trying to buy cutlets, wearing those shoes they wear and going on and on about meat being murder and that if sheep were left alone and never sheared they'd grow bigger and bigger and then float off into the sky to become clouds.'
'I've heard that about sheep,' said he of the vest and braces. 'And gorillas. They'd all grow to the size of King Kong if you left them to it. Which is why I always shoot the blighters if I see them in a zoo.'
I had not relinquished my hold upon Fangio's throat. 'Which way did Colonel Mortimer go?' I requested to know once again.
Fangio made gagging sounds, which I found less than informative.
'Let that barman go,' said the Cockney. 'Extra time will be starting in ten minutes.'
I let Fangio go. 'Tell me which way the colonel went,' I shouted at him, 'or I will shoot you dead.'
And to add some weight to my words, I drew out my pistol and flourished it all about. Which had a most remarkable effect on the crowd. Who immediately drew out theirs.
'That,' said the lady in the straw hat, 'is what you call a Mexican stand-off'
'The Scottish invented that,' said a well-informed member of the gun-toting crowd.
'I will shoot the barman,' I said. 'Then none of you will get served.' 'We'll help ourselves,' said the Cockney. 'Over my dead body,' said Fangio.
'Well, obviously,' said the lady in the straw hat. 'I think I'll have a double Pernod and lemonade. I've never been able to afford that.'
'Fange,' I said to Fangio, 'I do not want to shoot you, really. I just want to know where the colonel went.'
Fangio pointed across the bar to a sign above a doorway that read 'TO THE SCOREBOARD ONLY'. 'Thank you,' I said. 'No problem, sir. Now, who wants serving?' I went through the door and then up a flight of steps. Although they will not receive a mention here as Lazlo Woodbine did not work steps. Unless they were in alleyways, of course, like those retractable iron fire-escape job-bies that are always to be found in New York alleyways. And indeed figured large in The Bride Wore A Concrete Wedding Gown (A Lazlo Woodbine Thriller) where Laz held a week-long stakeout on just such a set of stairs, watching the rear door of Tony Gallenti's nightclub The Blue Nipple, and was rewarded by witnessing Deaf Boy Helligan, the blues singer, being gunned down by one of the Carrachilo Brothers, about which he was able to testify before the grand jury. Although this was done as a footnote. Because Laz did not do courtrooms. But I digress.
A rooftop is a rooftop, said the greatest Dick of them all, but a dame with a handlebar moustache will never be Queen of May. I eased open the rooftop door and peeped through the crack, my pistol in my hand.
And there he was, lying there, Colonel Mortimer, the best shot in the Carolinas. Henchman of the evil Count Otto Black. There was no doubt in my mind of that.
The door had less squeak to it than a mouse with laryngitis and I crept over the rooftop like a floor-fetishist at a tiler's tea party. And then I heard the crowd go crazy. The players were back on the field. I saw the colonel stiffen and take aim.
And I crept up upon him with a smile on my face that would have won me a first prize at Crufts had I been a spaniel and had spaniels' smiles been a speciality event.
'Oh, sod it,' I said to myself. 'I will shoot the blighter in the leg and have done with it.' And so I shot him. Just like that. And missed.
And Colonel Mortimer turned his head and, I have to say it, glared somewhat at me. And then he turned not only his head, but the rest of his body, too, including his rifle. 'So,' said he, rising to his feet, 'what do we have here?' I was frantically trying to reload my pistol.
'You are under arrest,' I said. 'Do not do anything hasty, such as shooting me. You are surrounded.'
'Really?' The colonel looked most unconvinced. And I do have to say that he did not look much like a colonel. I had always imagined colonels as having military bearing, and big sideburns, of course, and looking very much like Lionel Jefferies. This fellow looked more like Rondo Hatton.
'And who might you be?' asked the look-alike of Hollywood's greatest actor.
I chewed upon my bottom lip. 'The name is Woodbine,' I said, 'Lazlo Woodbine,' adding the now-legendary words, 'Some call me Laz.'
'Mister Woodlouse,' said Colonel Mortimer, which was at least in keeping with the books, in which Laz's name was always mispronounced, but not altogether impressive, because Fangio had already done that one. 'Mister Woodlouse, we meet again.' 'We do?' I said.
'Oh, indeed. Surely you recall in Death Is A Rotund Redhead (A Lazlo Woodbine Thriller) that we had a shootout in your office. I was disguised as a Persian dwarf and you as a fiddler's elbow. I escaped down the laundry chute, leaving you with egg on your face and fluff on your gramophone needle.'
'I do not think I remember that one,' I said, scratching at my fedora.
'Perhaps I just made it up, then. But it doesn't matter either way, because I'm going to kill you.'
'Look out behind you!' I shouted. 'Zulus, thousands of them.' But curiously to no effect.
It has always been the way with me that when caught in moments of extreme panic, I have a tendency to flap my hands and spin around in small circles. So far during my time with Mr Rune, I had somehow managed to avoid doing this, possibly because I was always in his company when the big trouble got on the go. But who indeed can say for sure?
But what I must confess here is that those hands of mine were really beginning to flap.
'Trying to fly away, are you?' Colonel Mortimer advanced upon me. 'You chose the wrong day to be Woodbine. Today, I'm afraid, is a Tuesday.'
I tried to stand my ground, but it was not easy. My hands were flapping freely now and I was beginning to spin.
'Let us talk about this,' I managed to say. 'You really do not want to shoot me.'
'Oh, I do,' said the colonel. 'I really do. And then I'll shoot Mister Grimsdale.' 'Mister Grimsdale?' I said. 'Who is Mister Grimsdale?'
'The referee,' said Colonel Mortimer. 'The swine who has been shagging my wife.' 'Oh,' I said. 'That Mister Grimsdale.'
'Well, obviously that Mister Grimsdale. What other Mister Grimsdale did you think I'd be lying on this rooftop trying to shoot?' 'The one in the Norman Wisdom movies?'
'What, the one played by that fine character actor Rondo Hatton?'
'Rondo Hatton did not play Mister Grimsdale,' I said. 'It was that fine character actor Edward Chapman who played Mister Grimsdale.'
'Well, that's neither here nor there. He has to die and so do you.' 'Well, actually, I do not,' I said. 'You see, I thought you were up here to shoot Father Ernetti.' 'Who?' 'The captain of the Benedictine Bears.' 'Oh, that Father Ernetti.'
'Yes,' I said. 'That one. But if you are only going to shoot the referee, that does not matter to me. I will leave you to get on with it. It is none of my business.' 'Sure?'
'Sure,' said I. 'If he has been having sex with your wife, then he deserves it. Go ahead. It is nothing to do with me.'
'You won't have another go at me when I lie down again to take aim?' 'Not at all. I will he down with you, if you want.'
'No,' said the colonel. 'You don't have to do that. I'm going to shoot myself afterwards. I shot my wife earlier, and when I've killed Grimsdale, I'll do away with myself'
'You know your own business best, then,' I said. 'Far be it from me to go butting in. I am sorry to have interrupted you. No offence meant.' 'None taken, I assure you.' And I went on my way. Well, sort of. I read the Argus the following day to see how he had got on. Not too well, as it happened. He may have been the best shot in the Carolinas, but it had been Tuesday and he had not even managed to wing that Mister Grimsdale.
Apparently, whilst taking aim he had slipped and fallen off the roof above the big scoreboard, and had not fared well when he had hit the crowd beneath, injuring a Cockney and bothering a lady who wore a straw hat. 'And so,' I said to Mr Rune, upon his return a few days later, 'through quick thinking and no small degree of bravery, with little thought for the danger to myself, I kicked his rifle aside. The shot missed Father Ernetti, whom he had sought to assassinate, being an evil catspaw of Count Otto Black, and no one was harmed. The struggle that followed on the rooftop was of the life and death persuasion, but I persevered and he took the fall to oblivion.'
Mr Rune sat back in his chair. He was clearly very impressed. 'I don't know what to say,' he said to me, at length. 'You can say that I am a damn fine detective,' I suggested. 'I could,' he said, in ready reply. 'Or a most creative liar.'
'Oh, come on,' I said. 'I solved the case of the Woodingdean Chameleon – at least give me credit for it.'
'I see,' said Mr Rune. 'Other than for the fact that the case was not set in Woodingdean and did not involve a chameleon.'
'I explained that,' I said. Because I had, earlier. 'Fangio confused Withdean with Woodingdean and Count Otto Black was there in the crowd, somewhere, overseeing his evil business in disguise, like a chameleon.' Hugo Rune raised one of his hairless eyebrows. 'Oh, all right then,' I said. 'I am rubbish. I did not solve it.'
Mr Rune smiled broadly and then he said, 'Yes, you did, even though the Father Ernetti you sought so bravely to protect is not the same Father Ernetti who invented the Chronovision. Although it was an easy mistake to make. And the gunman was not aiming at Father Ernetti. Nevertheless, you did solve the case.' 'I did?' I said. 'I did?'
'I know that things did not happen as you have described them because a chum of mine, the Scottish groundskeeper, did observe exactly what happened and reported everything to me. The groundskeeper saw you up-end Colonel Mortimer into the stands whilst the colonel was busy taking aim at Mister Grimsdale.'
'It is true,' I said. 'That is what really happened. Well, I could not let him shoot Mister Grimsdale, could I? Norman Wisdom would have been most upset. But tell me this: you knew that he was not aiming at Father Ernetti. How did you know that?'
'Because I know Colonel Mortimer, and his wife. He did not shoot her dead, either. He lied to you about that. She left him for another man. And it wasn't Mister Grimsdale. It was me. I've just spent a most pleasant few days away with that very woman in Eastbourne. And I'll probably be seeing a lot more of her, now that her husband is safely behind bars.' 'You cad!' I said. 'I admit it,' said Mr Rune. 'But you did solve the case of the Woodingdean Chameleon, as I knew you would.' 'But how,' I asked, 'if I got it all wrong?' 'Because the chameleon was you,' said Mr Rune. 'The chameleon, that creature which disguises itself, that creature was you – Mister Lazlo Woodingdean.' And I was most impressed by this.
'Now give me back that telescope you nicked,' said Hugo Rune.