[Chris O'Carroll]

No 4263
Set by J Seery
We asked for extracts from a tale of a fictional detective who has swapped his usual setting for that of another fictional detective.

This week’s winners
Hon menshes to Adrian Fry (“‘One across: opposite of yes, two letters.’ Disgusted, Morse threw the Midsomer Advertiser contemptuously aside”) and Katie Mallett (“Now, Mrs Hudson, I’m expecting a visitor for tea and I would like you to make sure it is the kind of tea that would make my acquaintance relaxed and comfortable”). I’d advise Horniman’s. The four winners can have £25 each, with the Tesco vouchers going in addition to Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead.

Kingsmarkham
It had been a tough day in Kingsmarkham but he had finally cracked the case. His assistant was full of admiration. “It beats me how you do it, Chief. How on earth did you spot that the poor old one-legged beggar was actually Professor Moriarty in disguise?” Ignoring the “no smoking” signs everywhere, Holmes puffed contentedly at his meerschaum pipe as he replied: “It was elementary, my dear Burden. My suspicions were aroused when I saw a blind cripple getting into a Mercedes; I simply asked to see his driving licence.”
Now, home at last, he picked up his violin and played a few notes but it didn’t have its usual soothing effect. He needed something stronger and was just preparing it when his wife, Dora, appeared. “Sher!” she expostulated. “I’ve asked you time and again not to shoot up with the children in the house!”
Brian Allgar

St Mary Mead I
“Thanks for coming, Vicar,” said Jack Frost, as he made room for the tea between some dirty laundry and a mountain of unsorted files and magazines. “I’m hoping you might be able to help me. We appear to have a sicko in St Mary Mead and he has been making nasty threats.”
“Threats?” asked the vicar.
“So it would seem,” replied Frost. “How else can you explain this sinister thing with the curved blades that was left on my doorstep with a note that warned: ‘These can cut off both heads and limbs’? Moreover, it was in your handwriting.”
“Oh, those. They’re secateurs,” explained the vicar. “I hoped you might find them useful.” Then, staring sadly out of the window, he mumbled, “Those poor roses and lilacs were the pride of the parish when Jane Marple lived here.”
J Garth Taylor

Botswana
Grace Makutsi adjusted her sizeable spectacles and pulled her jacket more tightly around her slight frame as the angry young man left the agency, crashing past the acacia tree into the bright sunlight.
“I shall now make us a nice cup of bush tea, Mma. We can think about this man and his problems more clearly then.”
A few chickens left the shade of the tree and pecked their way into the office. Jane Marple, perhaps regretting the dark bombazine although she would never have hinted at this and dreading yet more bush tea, reflected on the sustaining qualities of a proper pot of Horniman’s, especially in the face of a case of such evident wickedness as the young man had recounted: cattle theft was never an occurrence to be taken lightly but these were Sir Seretse Khama’s family’s cattle; it would not do.
“Thank you, Mma,” was all she said to her right-hand lady.
Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead

St Mary Mead II
I never warmed to the place. You see more people in one New York bar than in this whole sleepy English village. A fair percentage of the local hicks are slimy liars and stone-cold killers, just like in any big city, and they use a raised eyebrow the way I’d use a swift slap across the chops. This Cherry Baker dame was everything I didn’t like about them. I was always “Mr Hammer” to her, no matter how many times I told her to call me “Mike”, and she made it clear enough she never cared for my calling her friend “Jane” instead of “Miss Marple”. But none of that mattered when I found Cherry outside the vicarage, gutted like a Fulton Fish Market mackerel.
“Somebody will catch my fist in their puss for this,” I promised her bloody corpse, “or a lead slug from my rod in their belly.”
Chris O’Carroll