A bromide with breakfast

“Who are those police-officers, dear?” Angela Mons-de-Lancefoy’s voice was as clear as the peal of church bells on a sunny Sunday morning, so the entire café stopped eating, drinking and gossiping for a moment and stared in the direction she was pointing.  Leslie daFox’s police-guard looked embarrassed, and the fatter of the two tried to conceal his plate of cream-stuffed pastries behind his cup of coffee.

“They’re mine, kind of,” said Leslie.  Angela was an old friend and fellow writer, specialising in sub-genres of crime fiction.  “They think I murdered two of my students and have been following me around every since.  Occasionally they try and pin other murders on me too; a few weeks ago I was in the supermarket and someone a couple of aisles away was murdered.  Despite that they were with me the whole time they accused me of doing it!”

“They don’t sound very competent,” said Angela.  She sliced into her cake and prodded it with her fork.  “Dry and crumbly,” she said.  “Which, curiously, isn’t a bad way of describing my latest sub-genre.”  She picked up the piece of cake and dunked it in her latte.  “Italian-style,” she said, seeing the look on Leslie’s face.  “Just the bits of Italy that you never went to.”

Leslie shrugged; he’d spent some time in the eighties visiting bits and pieces of Italy, Spain and Portugal and had rather liked the mediterranean climate.  “You were always more bohemian than me,” he said.  “Weren’t you shacked up in the commune for six months with whatshisface?”

“Oh yes!” Angela sounded delighted.  “He was fun.  I turned him into a serial killer in one of my books later on.  I don’t think he ever learned to read though, so I doubt he knows.”

“What was that you were saying about dry and crumbly though?  How can that be a sub-genre of anything?”

“Oh, it was my agent’s idea.  Did you know she’s also the agent for Janet O’Steen, by the way?  Anyway, she said that there’s a generation of baby-boomers now who have never looked after themselves and are heading into old age being pretty much decrepit and dependent on their families and the state for handouts.  There’s far too many of them, so the handouts are rather small, so they end up being kind of old and crumbly.  So I’m writing novels where the detective is one of these people.  He’s not that brilliant to begin with, and he’s only on the force still because he can’t afford to retire and the pension isn’t large enough, so he has to keep working.  But his very age and overall miserability makes people underestimate him, and he can talk to his own generation in a very sympathetic way, and because they’re all kind of lonely and mean anyway, they’re nosey and eager to talk about what they’ve spied.  So he starts being able to solve these difficult cases where the evidence is all there, but it’s really hard to gather.  And then the police force start to appreciate him more, so they get special dispensation to extend his working life, and now he can’t retire until he’s 80 anyway, and he starts getting bitter about that.  But he’s too ineffectual to do much about it, and he has to make do with pithy asides and cutting sarcasm.”

“People buy books about that?”  Leslie looked slightly appalled.  “Where’s the feel-good element to it?”

“Oh Leslie,” sighed Angela dunking more cake in her latte.  “You always want to make to people laugh!  Sometimes they just want to wallow in their own misery and leaven it with self-pity.”

“Maybe I should write about my time under police scrutiny,” said Leslie.  “It might appeal to the paranoid masses.”

“You think you’re joking,” said Angela, “but just look at the revelations about the monitoring of communications.  People are starting to wonder how much of it is going on and what’s truly private.  If you’ve got a story about always being under the watchful eye of the system, then you should tell it!”

“I think the panopticon has already been done,” said Leslie.  His eyes twinkled.  “But you’re right you know, it’s been too long since I last did something for me.  I think the last thing I did was contribute two hundred jokes to one of those topical tv news shows.”

“Top Yourself This Week?”

“Something like that, yes.  They used about seventy; they said something about the others having too many long words in them.”

“Hah yes!  Lowest common denominator, Leslie.  Never forget!”

“Doesn’t anyone get to write high-quality, intellectual books these days?”

“Janet does.  And people who don’t want to make a living from writing.”

They fell silent for a moment, drinking their coffees.  Then, three tables away, a woman fell forward and landed face-first in a plate of slightly-sloppy Black Forest Gateau.  For a moment no-one said anything, and then her companion screamed while almost everyone else in the café produced a mobile phone and started snatching pictures to Instagram and post on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites.

“Did you do that?” asked Leslie and Angela simultaneously, and burst into mischievous laughter.  No-one around them noticed, being pre-occupied with the sudden death.  A knife was now clearly visible between the fallen woman’s shoulder-blades.  Finally Leslie waved at the police-officers.

“Yes Sir?” asked the thinner of the two.

“Aren’t you going to do anything?” said Angela.  “There’s a dead woman there who’s clearly been murdered.”

The policemen exchanged looks.  “Did you happen to see Mr. daFox do it?” asked the fatter.

Knowing what to ask

"Did you see all those tortoise shells?" said Miss Flava as they drove away.  Calamity, sat on the back seat, barked now and then, mud still sticking to her nose.
"Yes," said Playfair.  "But Bartle barely noticed them.  What did you say he was?"
"A Reverend," said Miss Flava.  "You've got the case notes already, you only just read them!  You're... in fact, you're sitting on them now!"
"Oh really?"  Playfair didn't sound interested, but he did pull the notes out from underneath himself, tearing them only a little in the process.  He made a show of going through the pages once again while Miss Flava peered at the road names and traffic signs and tried to work out where she was.  For a small village, Little Haversham seemed to have a lot of very short streets.
"Can you believe where that idiot has parked!" she snarled as she braked hard coming round a corner to find a midnight blue, sleek, sporty-looking car several inches out from the kerb and dangerously close to the corner.  "See, Playfair, this is what traffic wardens are for!  Stopping people doing idiotic things like this!"
"That's not enough to justify their existence," said Playfair flatly.  "The Nazis did good deeds now and then as well, you know."
"You're never comparing traffic wardens to the Nazis!"  Miss Flava braked again just so she could stare at her boss in wonderment.  "What the hell have traffic wardens ever done to you?"
"It says here that Bartle is a Reverend," said Playfair innocently, "but it doesn't tell me what church he's part of.  Did no-one think that was important?"
Miss Flava gently eased her foot back on to the accelerator and the car moved forward again.  At the cross-junction at the top of the street she finally spotted the road she was looking for: Potsdam Drive, about fifty yards the wrong way down a one-way street.  Looking for traffic, and finding that they were the only car on the road, she indicated and drove down the one-way street regardless.
"He's attached to St. Samuels," she said.  "That's the church we saw, in whose grounds the body was found.  I think it's a C of E church."
"Hmph." Playfair shuffled the papers again.  "Just because he's using a C of E church doesn't mean he's Anglican.  A lot of those happy-clappy places use churches that have been sold off, and you sometimes have to look pretty closely to find out just what you're walking into.  I want him checked out properly, get me some background on him."
"We could just ask him, of course," said Miss Flava.  "We're in Little Haversham, I've no idea if they've heard of the internet this far outside of London."
"Fine, write it down as a question for later, then," said Playfair.  "By the way, you're going the wrong way on a one-way street."
"Not any more," said Miss Flava, making her turning onto Potsdam Drive.  Astonishingly, given how short all the other streets had been, this stretched into the distance.  She kept her speed low so that she could see hidden entrances; there were lots of trees and high hedges on the sides of the road.
"Also," said Playfair, and Miss Flava mentally sighed a little.  Her boss had clearly found things wrong in the investigation of the case so far, and not only would she hear about it now, she'd have to step in when he started on the luckless souls who'd not met his standards.  "Also, it says here that the body was found in the woods next to the church, not on the church grounds."
"The woods actually belong to the church," said Miss Flava.  "Though woods is perhaps a bit generous, it's more of a large copse."
"The corpse was found in the copse," said Playfair, gazing off into the distance again.  "I wonder if that's just coincidence.  You should have turned there, by the way."
Miss Flava restrained a snarl, having just spotted the sign announcing Little Haversham Police Station half-hidden behind a hedge, and too late to turn in.  She braked, and started a three-point turn.  This was not how she'd hoped to arrive.

Reverend Bartle II

"Er, isn't that one of those martial arts?"  Reverend Bartle looked rather confused by Playfair's sudden change of tack, and Miss Flava sympathised.  She looked over at Calamity who'd by now dug up nearly half of the tomato plants.  At a guess, she'd say that a good half-a-morning's work had been reduced to so much scattered soil and half-dead plants.  The green, meaty smell of tomato plants drifted towards her, and she wrinkled her nose a little.  She'd never much liked tomatoes, preferring to hide them under salad leaves or pull them out of her egg-salad sandwiches and drop them in the bin.  From which Calamity would invariably retrieve them, if they were in the office, and then eat them.
"No.  That would make it respectable."  Inspector Playfair was definite.  "It's the art of re-arranging furniture for large sums of money.  And I use the word art, rather than science, to indicate in particular that it is funded solely by people who think that the effect something has is more important than the cause responsible for it and who can't see when a painting is, in fact, just the result of the artist having a seizure in front of a canvas while holding paint.  Rather than heal the poor bugger who's just chewed through eight tubes of paint they pay ridiculous sums of money for his canvas and hope he doesn't think of getting treatment himself."
"Er.  Right," said Bartle.  "So Feng Shui is redecorating with furniture is it?  Is that something you do at IKEA?"
"I hope not.  You're not a follower, or a fan of Feng Shui then?"
"Sorry, Inspector, I'm rather not.  I don't do much interior design, my partner looks after all that kind of thing.  I'm more of a cook and a gardener."
There was a pause while they both looked at Calamity who had now dug up all of the tomato plants and was frantically digging in the rockery, unearthing rocks, more soil, and the occasional tortoise shell.
"It looks like we might have to buy tomatoes this year," said Bartle with a hint of reproval.  Playfair ignored him.
"What's your opinion of the dead then?  You're a priest, right, you must have to do the odd funeral.  Do you play with the bodies a bit first?"
"What?!"  Bartle reddened and his eyes opened wider, he puffed his chest out and looked more than a little ridiculous in his dress.  "What are you suggesting, officer?"
"I think he's suggesting that you tampered with the evidence," said Miss Flava, who was turning over the tortoise shells with a foot.  They all seemed to be free of dead tortoise, fresh or decomposed, and there was no sign of the shells being broken into.
"What?" Bartle turned to face her now, still red in the face and his voice was increasing in pitch.
"How did you know it was a screwdriver sticking into his neck?" said Playfair, his voice suddenly soft and coercive.  "If all you could see want the handle, and the man was hanging, so necessarily higher up than you because he's got to be off the ground, and the ground's all soft with blood, so you wouldn't get too close; if all this is true, how did you know he had a screwdriver in his neck?"
Bartle stared at Miss Flava, then at Playfair, and finally at Calamity, who was now in a hole almost the same size as her and still digging.
"They told me," he said weakly.  "The policemen, when they came to ask me about things.  They told me there was a screwdriver in the side of his neck.  They wanted to see what tools I have, so I showed them.  I keep them all in the greenhouse anyway, and screwdrivers aren't really gardening tools, are they?  Where is you dog going, Inspector?"
"Down," said Playfair.  "Don't worry, she wont' dig so deep that she can't get out again.  So, you claim that you know about this screwdriver because someone else told you.  Why are you telling me about it like you saw it at the time then?"
"I didn't know this was an interview!  You just came over and let your damn dog loose to ruin my garden and started asking weird questions!"  Bartle was tripping over his words now and looked extremely agitated; his hands were trembling and he kept smoothing down the front of his dress, unconsciously rubbing mud into it over and over again.
"Calamity!  Car!"  Playfair's voice was stentorian, and Calamity lifted her head, regarded him for a second, then bounded out of her hole and galloped back to the car.  Miss Flava nudged the fifth tortoise shell into line with the others with her foot, and then strolled over to the car as well to open the door and let Calamity back in.
"I'll have more questions for you," said Playfair.  "But I'll need to decide what they are first.  Enjoy your gardening."
Bartle stared after them in astonishment, watching as Playfair made a stab at getting the driver's seat and was neatly cut-off by a very rapid Miss Flava.  He grimaced, but went back round the to the passenger side and got in there while Miss Flava made sure she was in the driver's seat before he'd even opened his door.  The dog, the enormous Rottweiler that had completely ruined his gardening, barked a couple of times, and then the engine started up and the car drove away, leaving him with no tomatoes, a huge hole in the rockery, and a ridiculous number of tortoise shells.  He was pretty certain that neither he nor the previous priest had ever even owned a tortoise.

interregnum

Leslie daFox was thinking about ziggurats as he climbed the steps of the Stalinist Camberwick Community Centre.  There was something about the sheer mass of the Community Centre that made him think of an ancient step pyramid whose top was reserved for human sacrifice.  He could, if he tried, imagine a woman with coffee-coloured skin wearing a feathered and beaded headdress holding a bronze dagger aloft, poised above the virgin's navel, ready to descend and elevate the pure young man below to the heavens, to join the gods and bless his former people.
"Bronze is a silly choice for the dagger," he said, mostly to himself.  "It would blunt in no time, probably while you're still trying to get through the rib-cage to reach the heart.  Flint now, that would do the trick.  Or possibly that black glass stuff, that might be available in the South Americas at that time."
"What's that sir?" said Policeman number one, who was huffing and puffing on Leslie's left side.
"He was saying that glass is better than bronze," said Policeman number two helpfully.  He was having no trouble with the steps at all and was actually taking them two at a time.  Both policemen were still dogging Leslie's every move while the death of two students in his class was investigated.  He'd even had to let them bring their sleeping bags into his conservatory so that they could guard him from inside the house, which was tantamount to admitting that they suspected him.  Though their pouncing on him last time he'd made a slightly off-colour remark was better evidence.
"Why... why is glass better than bronze?" gasped Policeman number one.  They reached the top of the steps and he leaned his hands on his knees, bending forward and going puce.
"You can use it to make windows," said Leslie.  "The trouble with bronze for windows is that it's too noisy; every time the wind blows it vibrates and either clatters or gongs, depending on how thin you made the sheets."
"Right," said Policeman number one, his chest heaving like a hyperactive blacksmith's bellows.  "That... that makes... sense!"
No, it doesn't thought Leslie, leading the way to the main doors.  Windows are made of glass because it's transparent, you nitwit.  Bronze would never work for windows.
"Good morning, sir!" said one of the security guards at the towering portals that allowed entrance into the Community Centre.  Leslie smiled, full of false bonhomie, and greeted the guard back.  They were the most frightening clever and well educated body of men he'd ever met, and he was worried that they might actually be cleverer than him.  He was also puzzled that they were exclusively male.
He led the way across the main hallway, initially heading for the lift.  Then, feeling mean, he paused and turned left at a small door and took the spiral staircase up the three floors to the lecture hall he was using.  Policeman number two took the front position, and Policeman number one gave up after about six steps and sat down.  At the top Policeman number two looked puzzled.
"Where's Joe?" he said.
"He sat down," said Leslie.  "He'll catch us up when he's caught his breath."
"There's got to be two of us guarding you at all times!  You're a menace to society!"
"Thanks.  For my script-writing?  My short-story collections?  Some of my novels?"
"For murdering two of your students in broad daylight, actually, sir.  We know you did it, we just have to find the evidence."
"When I wrote police procedurals," said Leslie carefully, "I was told that it was the other way around.  First you find the evidence, and then you hound the culprit.  Not pick a culprit and hound him until he provides you with some evidence."
"You've never watched Columbo, have you sir?" said the Policeman sounding sympathetic.
"Actually I have," said Leslie.  "And I turned down the opportunity to write for it too; I felt that any script with words longer than two syllables would be too far above the target demographic."
"Oh I see!  You had your targets picked out even back then, did you sir?"  The policeman produced a notebook from a pocket and started scribbling in it with a little black pencil.  Leslie sighed and tried to go the lecture hall.
"No, wait there, please sir."  Policeman number two extended a muscular arm and held Leslie in place.  "There have to be two of us guarding you at all times."
"I'll be late for the class," said Leslie.  "What if someone's been murdered by the time we get there?"
"That would be very clever of you, sir," said Policeman number two.  "Murdering someone when I'm here watching you the whole time."
"Yes, wouldn't it?" said Leslie.  He was starting to wish he'd never given up smoking, even though it was nine and a half years ago now.  There was a wheezing noise from below, suggesting that Policeman number one was finally making the ascent.  When he staggered the last couple of steps two minutes later Policeman number two finally let go of Leslie and he could lead them into the lecture hall.
In the middle of the floor, surrounding by aghast and appalled students, was a dead body and a lake of blood.

Playfair arriving

Miss Flava parallel parked, tucking the police car in between a white Prius and a blue Golf.  There was no actual need to parallel park, there were several open spaces that could be driven straight into in the shopping centre car-park across the road, but she was determined to quietly prove to Detective Inspector Playfair that she was a competent driver.
"You said that there were no traffic wardens here?" was Playfair's dour comment as she turned the engine off.  "Because if there are they'll be watching.  They're like cuckoos you know."
"Cuckoos?  Do you mean hawks, Sir?"  Miss Flava looked across at her boss to find him staring out through the windscreen at an elderly lady with a big shopping bag and a poodle.  She'd stopped under the weight of Playfair's glare and was looking nervous.  Her poodle yipped, straining at its leash.
"Cuckoos," said Playfair, not looking away from the old woman.  "The ones that lay their eggs in other birds nests.  Vipers, the lot of them.  And I think I've found one."
"Vipers?  Playfair, I think you're mixing your metaphors rather badly, you don't find vipers in birds nests, and certainly not hatching out of cuckoo's eggs.  And stop staring!  That's an old woman, there are no traffic wardens in Haversham!  There are two vacancies for traffic wardens and that's it!"
The poodle yipped again and pulled harder, trying to get away.  In the back seat Calamity stirred, her ears pricking up, wondering what they're just heard.
"She looks like a traffic warden," said Playfair.  "She's got that deer-in-the-bull-bars look, see.  He pointed, and the old lady quivered, dropping her shopping bag.  There was a soft crunch.
"Deer in the headlights, I hope," said Miss Flava marvelling at her boss's ability to desecrate the English language.  "Although the way you drive, perhaps you're more accurate."
"What?" Playfair looked away from the old woman to glare now at Miss Flava, who was used to it.  Out of his blistering gaze the old lady sagged like a puppet whose strings had just been caught, letting go of her dog's lead.  The poodle barked again, and now Calamity sat up, her ears pricked and her eyes raking the view through the windscreen for the source of the noise.
"Down girl!" bellowed Playfair as Calamity prepared to spring.  Miss Flava leaned towards the side-window instinctively, but Calamity obediently sat, as did the old lady.  Her poodle yipped again and ran off, narrowly missing knocking a cyclist off his bike.
"Here," said Miss Flava, seizing the letter from the back seat just ahead of Calamity sitting back down on it.  "Read this, so you at least know why we're here, and I'll keep an eye out for balloons."
"Cuckoos," said Playfair unfolding the paper.  "Although in summer, perhaps caddis flies would be better."
"Cuckoos, then," said Miss Flava.  "And Feng Shui consultants."

Five minutes later, after some grumbling and the occasional expletive directed at passers-by that Playfair thought were unnecessarily obstructing his sunlight, he laid the paper down on his knee and stared through the windscreen again.
"A murderous muse?" he said.  "That's a bit odd, even for a place with no traffic wardens."
"What and what?"  Miss Flava had read the paper and spoken with Right Reverend Derek Battle and had no idea what Playfair meant by either part of his statement.
"Well," said Playfair sounding thoughtful.  His fingers drummed on his knee.  "Traffic wardens are a lot weird in and of themselves, they kind of focus weirdness and unpleasant sensations in one place.  A place that has no traffic wardens has to spread all that weirdness around a bit, so everything ends up being a bit odd, doesn't it?"
"Does it?"  Miss Flava was still hunting for the source of Playfair antagonism to traffic wardens.
"Yes," said Playfair.  "It's like a place with no mathematicians.  Everyone else seems to get a bit cleverer to compensate."
"What are you trying to say, Playfair?"
"Shoot all the mathematicians and force people to be traffic wardens for a year.  National Service, or something like it.  Build some back-braces for people."
"You can't go shooting mathematicians!"  Miss Flava was aghast.  "But... but you're distracting me, Playfair, damn you.  What was that about a murderous muse?"
"Melpomene," said Playfair, waving the paper.  "According to this statement a man was murdered by the muse Melpomene.  And considering she's the personification of a two-thousand year-old Greek ideal, that's very interesting."

Musings II

"That's a majority vote," said Cio.  "Five of nine agree."
"Who did the turning into a magpie thing last time then?"  Terpsichore was pirouetting, one after another now, and her voice sounded strangely distorted and disembodied.  Five heads all looked at one another, shaking slightly as they did so.
"Oh bugger," said Calliope.  "Well, whichever one of us did it had better remember how then."
"It's not really a dance thing," said Terpsichore.  "I can do the Red Shoes though."
"That's not Greek legend!"  Clio sounded snappish.
"Maybe," said Terpsichore, "but it is dancing, so I can do it.  Find me Carnalità and I'll have her dancing in red hot shoes for the next eternity-and-a-half."
"Well, if it comes to that, becoming a magpie's not a tragedy but becoming disfigured or disabled is, especially in modern society," said Melpomene.  "If anyone's got a knife, I can definitely sort that out."
There was a shocked silence while the other four Muses stared at her, and she stared defiantly back.  "It's not like they come with manuals," she said, "It's pretty much just poke and twist, poke and twist."
"Ah, it sounds like we're talking about Carnalità," said a new voice.  Erato rose gracefully from the ground, an exedra appearing underneath her and supporting her upward movement.  Her exedra was covered with finely chiselled love poetry.
"Actually, Melpomene was just letting us in on how violent she's getting," said Clio.  "She's offering to disable and/or disfigure Carnalità."
"That sounds like a plan," said Erato.  "I could make sure she enjoys it while it's happening.  The S&M scene seems to be producing so much material these days that I've had to have a new toga made, out of leather."
The other muses now regarded Erato who toga was indeed black, leather, and appeared to be able to divide into numerous straps and bindings with a shake of a wrist.
"That's very..." said Calliope, and the other Muses nodded agreement.
"Not exactly my choice," said Erato, "but we have to move with the times, don't we?"
"No," said Clio.  "We learn from history, don't forget."
"So, historically then," said Melpomene with an edge in her voice, "which of us did the magpie trick last time?"
Clio looked momentarily furious, and then a stack of parchment crashed down on the paved floor beside her.
"Give me a minute, and I'll find out," she said.
"How are you going to disable her?" said Terpsichore, sitting down at last and massaging her feet.  "I want to make her dance, don't forget."
"Oh, now we're just being cruel!" Urania looked upset.  "You can't put her in a wheelchair then in red hot shoes that force her to dance!"
"Fine, fine," said Melpomene.  "I'll just disfigure her then.  Cut off her ears, nose, some fingers, carve someone's name on her back, that kind of thing."
"Just who are you hanging around with these days?" said Calliope.  "You used to be one of the nicest people I'd ever met."
"Magpies!" called out Clio, attracting their attention.  "Bad news girls, apparently Apollo did it for us."
"That's not bad news," said Urania.  "We can ask him to do it again."
"Carnalità's supposed to be sleeping with him though," said Clio.  "I thought everyone had heard that rumour?"
"He'll do it if we're unanimous," said Melpomene.  "He can't live without us, you know."
"That's true," said Polyhymnia, stepping into the circle.  "Did you girls not walk here then?"
"Magpies?" asked Clio, and seven hands now rose.  "Great, that's good enough.  Let's get Apollo on the case."
Melpomene put the knife that she'd fashioned from her exedra down, and followed the rest of the Muses on a trip to see Apollo.  Behind them, the grass still grew and the wind blew silently around their meeting place.

Epistrophe

Leslie daFox stood at the front of his classroom, flanked by two police officers from the Serious Crimes Squad.  They were both uniformed, obviously wearing bullet-proof vests, had refused to remove their peaked caps while indoors despite Leslie's twenty-two minute rant about the sheer bloody unluckiness of their actions, and were standing to attention with their hands neatly clasped behind their backs.  They were, Leslie felt, rather showing up his students, who were mostly slumped in their seats in the auditorium in various stages of semi-consciousness.  Two seats were conspicuously left empty in the middle of the middle row; in those two seats in his last class two women had been found murdered, which accounted for his police guard right now.  Not that they were worried that he might be the next victim, they were rather more concerned that he might be the murderer.
"WAKE UP!" shouted Leslie, feeling malicious.  That morning he'd caught the maid ironing his socks without turning them inside out first, and he'd shouted at her for fifteen minutes until she'd finally burst into tears and fled into the laundry room, where he could heard her trying to dig into a basket of wet laundry and hide.  Every time he remembered that he felt better about the day, just as every time he caught sight of a police officer out of the corner of his eye he felt angry.
"Today's lesson," he continued, in a slightly lower voice, "is about rhetoric.  Rhetoric, as you would know if any of you could read well enough to read the syllabus and know what books you're supposed to read for each lesson, is traditionally considered part of the art of public speaking.  Despite its links to oratory, the many themes and tropes of rhetoric have their uses in literature as well."
"OI!  YOU!  YOU UNPLEASANT LITTLE WORM YOU!  PAY ATTENTION WHEN THE MURDERER IS SPEAKING!" bellowed Policeman #1.  Leslie cringed, his ears ringing, and his annoyance levels rising that he'd not been able to shout at the student first.
"Alleged murderer," said Policeman #2, looking across at Policeman #1.
"Provisionally," replied Policeman #1, looking back.
"I'm not a murderer," said Leslie firmly to them both, then turned back to his audience, who were watching the show at the front as though it were a soap opera. "Are you all listening now?"  The attentiveness and shiny eyes of the audience suggested that they were.
"Do you reckon it's true that he kills off the ones that get the lowest homework marks?" said Policeman #2 before Leslie could continue.  The audience vibrated with nerves and alertness.
"You're all too thick to know where Greece is," said Leslie, trying to ignore the poorly scripted comedy routine going on behind him, "so you only need to know that our first topic shall be Epistrophe.  No," he said to the rising of a hand from the third row, "it is not an island, nor is it a nightclub.  Epistrophe is the repetition of words at the end of sentences for effect.  If anyone can tell me what the repetition of words at the start of a sentence for effect is, I shall give them a manor house in the Cotswolds, a villa in Spain, and invite them to call me by my first name."
No-one's hand rose, and Leslie sighed, though inwardly he was rather thrilled to have taken a chance and still won his bet with himself.
The door at the back opened, and a Camberwick Green security guard slipped in, looking guilty.
"Perhaps," said Leslie, remembering the sobs coming from the sodden laundry earlier that morning, "you all feel that such questions are too easy for you to answer?  Let me ask a functionary; you there!"
"STAND WHERE YOU ARE YOU HORRIBLE LITTLE FUNCTIONARY!" bellowed Policeman #1, and the security guard stopped and stared at him.
"What is the opposite of epistrophe?" asked Leslie.
"Anaphora, guv," said the security guard, to Leslie's pleased nod.  "Not to be confused with Amphora, which is the wife's sister's name, on account of her not liking being called Jug."
"Really?" said Leslie,  "It takes all sorts I suppose.  I think I'd probably have had something unpleasant happen to my parents if they'd tried to call me Jug."
"STATEMENT OF INTENT!" yelled both policeman simultaneously, and tackled a protesting Leslie to the ground.  As he struggled, his students slipped away, all worrying that their next homework submission was going to result in a death-sentence.

Newspaper man

"Why don't you read a newspaper?" My father sounded exasperated but looked calm, stood in the doorway sipping intermittantly from his coffee cup. I hurled another cushion at my brother, who ducked, and replied,
"I don't want to be the kind of person who reads newspapers. I want to be the kind of person that newspapers write about!"
"You remind me of your mother," he said, sighing just a little, and turned away. Only after he'd left did I think to wonder if he meant because I was wearing her navy blouse and skirt or because of my attitude to life.

*
I was playing with my lego when my father walked in. He looked at the Millenium Falcon I was half-way through and snorted. At first I thought I knew why -- one of the wings had been trodden on in one of my sibling-fights and did not look capable of supporting a craft in flight -- but then he walked off. I put the craft down, wondering if I'd done something very wrong, but then he reappeared with a heavy coffee-table book and threw it at me.
I caught it easily -- in my sibling fights we were now throwing cast-iron pots and pan at each other -- and looked at it. It was an architecture book, featuring the works of Frank Gehry.
"You want to be in the newspapers," said my father, "you'll need a worthwhile talent. And while your drag is good, it'll only get into the locals. For the nationals you'll need something better."
I opened the book and stared at the pictures inside, and something inside me reached out, wanting to build. When my father returned twenty-five minutes later to ask if I'd seen the weed-killer, I had changed out of my mother's clothes and into a crisp white shirt, smart trousers and polished shoes. I hadn't seen the weed-killer.

*
Three years later and the coffee-table book had been dismantled, the pictures pinned up on the walls of my room. More technical and complicated books were stacked on the desk and the drawing board next to it. I had annexed all of the lego in the house and used it to build models; then I'd constructed paper models based on what the lego suggested would work. Diagrams and blueprints occupied the drawing board, and my fingers had near-permanent blue stains from the fine-nibbed graphing pens I used.
My brother ran past the door, screaming. A few seconds later a blast from a flame-thrower roared down the corridor, and a few seconds after that my father bellowed,
"Not in the house!" There was an oily, greasy smell that drifted into the room, followed by my father. He looked around him at everything I had and walked out again. I was sure I heard him mutter,
"I think the drag was safer."

*
My father looked on as I hammered the last couple of nails in above the window and stood back. Two-thirds of the tree-house was now complete, and I'd finished the conservatory. I smiled, pleased with it.
"The reporters are here," he said. "You made it into the papers. By the way, have you seen your brother?"
I shook my head, and headed out to talk to people about my tree-house, which was the size of a small bungalow, built across four trees, had a conservatory, a solarium and would eventually have solar-powered showers and a jacuzzi. The outer design was all curves and twists that drew the eye in and then confused it, leaving it lost in what might be an optical illusion. And it was all constructed from natural materials.
The reporters started up a clamour when they saw me, and I smiled a little. I was going to be one of those people in the newspapers after all.
As for my brother... well, he was one of those people in the foundations of the treehouse.