The Puzzler of the Prioress’s Purloin’d Parasol

August 15th, 2003 Posted in Scripts and Dialogues

Inspector Sanchez: “You’ve certainly put your deuced foot in it this time, Pinkerton. I’ve defended your foppish airs and addle-pated Tom-fools before, but this time you’ve gone too far! Engaging in fisticuffsmanship with the Archbishop of Kent on the rooftops? You’ve taken leave of your damned senses, you brutish son of a fishmonger!”

Pinkerton: “Nothing of the sort, my good Inspector. The fisticuffsmanship you refer to was mere subterfuge, to the end of securing a swatch of the Archbishop’s robe, as I have thusly. And, having obtained the very thing, I ask you, good sir, to fetch the local constabulary at your earliest convenience.”

Inspector Sanchez: “Whatever for, Pinkerton?”

Pinkerton: “For the purposes of apprehending the felon, my good Inspector, for I have sleuth’d him out. I am now convinced the Prioress was murder’d most foully with a candelabra, in the parlor.”

Inspector Sanchez: “Yes, Pinkerton, we already knew that.”

Pinkerton: “Ah, and did you also know that the villain who committed the deed is none other than Professor Plum, teacher of the Classics at Oxford?”

Plum: [from crowd] “Egads! What a load of codswallop!”

Pinkerton: “Inspector, I recall you mentioned an odd discoloration upon the wall of the parlor where the prioress was found.”

Inspector Sanchez: “True. T’was what led us to ascertain the murderer was either a blackboot or chimney-sweep.”

Pinkerton: “T’was also what led you off the scent of the true felon, my good Inspector. I now believe that discoloration was not coal at all, but rather excretus from the anal recesses of our good professor.”

Plum: “Egads!”

Inspector Sanchez: “Pinkerton, what the poorly-researched British slang are you talking about?”

Pinkerton: “It would seem our professor enjoys the silk trade, and has made a right penny from these endeavors in past dealings. Enough right pennies, in fact, that he got greedy, and lost a veritable fortune through the purchase of exotic spices in Constantinople, when the ship carrying the wares was lost at sea. Desperate for recompense, the professor began entertaining male suitors in the parlor, unbeknownst to the prioress, who gave him lodgings under the pretense that he was a gentleman of stalwart virtue—misplaced, it would seem.”

Plum: “This is preposterous and inflammatory!”

Pinkerton: “It is both—yet also true, alas. Professor Plum, I accuse that you are a profligate sodomite, taken to receiving both payment and luggage up the nancy to recompense your losses in the spice trade! I accuse further that the Archbishop of Kent was one of your more regular customers, and that the parlor was his room of choice for your bouts of heathenrous cock-play! I accuse still further that the Prioress chanc’d upon these dealings off ill repute on the night of the 27th, and you saw no other recourse but to club the woman senseless with a candelabra and defenestrate her, your dark secret kept!”

Plum: “You’ve no proof!”

Pinkerton: “Don’t I? Observe this swatch of cloth that I purloin’d from the Archbishop during our fisticuffsmanship! Inspector, would you please read what has been stitched into the seam?”

Inspector Sanchez: [reading] “I, Archbishop of Kent, engage in profligate sodomy with Professor Plum.”

Pinkerton: “The very thing! And if anyone here is in want of further proof, look no further than a pantsless Professor Plum!” [removing Plum's pants] “If all I have said was a lie… would Archbishop Kent be at this moment having anal intercourse with the good professor?”

Archibshop of Kent: [having anal intercourse with Plum] “Curses!”

Inspector Sanchez: “Well, this takes the Huntley. Clap the irons to them both, lads! Pinkerton, how the deuce do you do it?”

Pinkerton: “My methods are a trade secret, my dear Inspector Sanchez. What is important is that these fiendish villains have been 0wNZ0RD like little bitches.”

Inspector: “Capital!”

Pinkerton: “All up ons, Inspector.” [lighting crackpipe] “All up ons.”