2.1: A knock in the night

 Season 2: The Herbert Whodunnit

After the drama of The Curious Case of Juggins-the-False, things have settled down in the Potting Shed. The members have been going about their business of going for walks, exploring the countryside, growing vegetables and doing odd jobs to help out members of theirs and the wider community. Even though it is only August, it already feels a little like Autumn as the evenings grew shorter. Might that be the end of the summer? Will it now just be quiet evenings in, in front of the stove?

The Committee Chair, Alcock, has been a little troubled by what went on earlier in the year but Masongill - the focus of the ‘case’ - has seemed perfectly happy, playing his role as a night watchman, keeping an eye on the Potting Shed every night from a hollow in the hillside above, when most of the others have gone to sleep. 

Thus it is Masongill who first sees their new visitor, a strangely bedraggled bear, or perhaps monkey, who arrives out of the dark night, banging on the door. 

Masongill hurries down from his watching place just as Alcock opens the door and they both hear the visitor’s strange speech. 

“Who gives anything to poor Tom? Whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, through ford and whirlpool, o’er bog and quagmire; that hath laid knives under his pillow and halters in his pew, set ratsbane by his porridge, made him proud of heart, to ride on a bay trotting horse over four-inch'd bridges, to course his own shadow for a traitor. Bless thy five wits! Tom’s a-cold. O, do de, do de, do de. Bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking! Do poor Tom some charity, whom the foul fiend vexes. There could I have him now - and there - and there again - and there!”

What could any of this mean?

Already Alcock realises they are again wrapped up in some sort of adventure, or mystery, or ‘affair’. What alliterates with ‘p’ or ‘t’? No doubt The Poor-Tom Puzzle!