S2.1: Bold promises for Lottie’s short tale
The Deadly Assassin! A JugginsVerse Short Tale
Some time has passed since the evening when pTravis, Masongill and Lottie saw Fabian passing their den, carrying Giles the pea, on the way to his night-watching post and constructed the tale of how it came about. At the end of that tale, Lottie had boasted that she had another, which showed Fabian in quite another light.
But the mundane events of life in the Potting Shed have intervened. A bad flood in the shower block. Some poorly timed late frosts in the kitchen garden. And a bizarre visit from a VAT inspector, who may actually have been lost but refused to admit it and instead demanded to see Alcock’s collection of post-it notes that served as his accounts and then insisted everyone turn out their pockets for stray receipts for crisps and dandelion and burdock. In one way or another, all have reduced the number of occasions the three younger colleagues have had a quiet early evening in their den in the woods.
And even when they have, Lottie has, to the others’ surprise, not rushed to tell her story. But one evening pTravis decides to raise it again.
“So, Lottie, what about this tale you hinted at?”
“Well I’ve been having some second thoughts. I don’t think that our Chairman would be at all happy if he knew I’d told anyone. He more or less swore me to secrecy. But, on the other hand, when ’Gillo invoked the ‘rules, traditions and customs of the short’ the other week, like a Freemason, I realised that there might be a kind of right or freedom to tell these things as a ‘short’. That’s a rule Alcock himself has introduced. So I want to invoke all that but, as a compromise, I’ll just tell you two. And, since pTravis here, is almost bound to become Chairman of the Potting Shed one day…”
pTravis looks embarrassed but does not dismiss the possibility. Masongill looks at him with an ambiguous expression. Lottie continues.
“… it may be helpful for him to know this story. It’s a big story!”
“Well you say that, but why is it so ‘big’?”
“Well, what do we know about Chairman Alcock?”
“Well that he is the founding Chairman of the Potting Shed.”
“And…?”
“That he likes committees and minutes and constitutions…”
“Yes: he is a bit of a stickler for rules and paperwork. And…”
“And he used to be in the army.”
“But….?”
“But he left. In fact, he became a pacifist.”
“And what do we know about Fabian?”
“Well almost nothing. But we know from Lois-the-Hippo that our initial impression that Alcock already knew him was correct. And we know that he has tried to become a racing snail, but that was only comparatively recently according to the limited records of his races in the back issues of the Racing Post. We know nothing else about his past. He seems to keep all that to himself.”
“Well,“ says Lottie, boastfully, “my tale will tell when and where Alcock and Fabian met (not England!); what Fabian’s pre-racing career was; Alcock’s rash decision and thus probably why he left the army; and what Fabian’s real talent was and still is. And it’s not racing!”
“I suspect” says Masongill, who seems to take a strong interest in the customs and practices of ‘Short Tales’ “that you will be relying heavily on the accepted principle of improving a tale by ignoring the truth!”
“Not deliberately” Lottie replies.
The Deadly Assassin will air for the next seven evenings at 6pm. The exegesis site is here.