We are now entering a period which historians and peanut vendors call “Scurveyshire’s Dark Age.”
The June Taylor Dancers have emerged from the forest and pretty much conquered the shire. Lord Jeremy Coldsore and his friends and family are holed up in the manor house. Peering down from the lofty tower once used as a location in The Pnath Brothers Meet the Bowery Boys, Lord Jeremy remarks to the American adventurer, Willis Twombley (who thinks he’s Sargon of Akkad), “If only they’d stop the bloomin’ dancing! It’s getting on my nerves.”
Here the author, Violet Crepuscular, breaks in.
“Before Mr. Twombley reveals the long-lost truth about the June Taylor Dancers, I must object to whoever it is out there who’s ruined my plot!” she ululates.
Before she can reveal Twombley revealing the secret, Twombley shoulders his rifle and pots the dancer with the floppy ears.
“I say!” exacerbates Jeremy. “That’s just not done, old chap! It’s murder, you know.”
“Murder schmurder, as they say in Kizzuwatna,” answers Twombley. “It ain’t nothin’ compared to what Violet’s cookin’ up for next week.”
Let us leave it at that, for now. They don’t call Violet The Queen Of Suspense for nothing.