LITMIR.BIZ

      Midnight. Time for lunch. In a dusty candlelit room with a sagging ceiling, a wrinkled old woman reached into her plastic bag and pulled out something squidgy wrapped in newspaper. She wore a duffel coat with a woolly tea cosy on her head and thick red lipstick plastered all round her mouth. There she sat, alone in her wheelchair in the centre of the room, smacking her withered lips at the package in her hands. The old woman clawed the newspaper open, feasting her eyes on the oozing corned beef and jellybean sandwich within. One gleeful chomp with her toothless gums sent the meaty gunk splurging all over her trembling fingers and down the front of her duffel coat.

      Torn shreds of newspaper drifted, forgotten, to the floor. ‘LE CHAT STRIKES AGA—’ said half of the ripped headline. More half-words and phrases settled on top: ‘—nother robbery…’ ‘…cat burgl—’ ‘—ver the head with a cricket b—’ ‘—ed by a single cat’s whisker…’ But the old woman couldn’t give a monkey’s armband. She only used the paper to wrap up her sandwiches.

      Betty Woons was old. Really, really old. She was so old that barnacles lived between her toes and her wrinkles were protected by the National Trust. She was old enough to be your grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother’s… well, you get the point.

      But Old Father Time had a bit of a job catching up with Betty. She spent her years zipping around the village on her turbo-powered electric wheelchair, knocking over unsuspecting villagers and doing flips off street corners.

      Tonight Betty was on guard duty. Behind her, propped up in a smudgy glass cabinet, was the reason she was there: an ancient iron sword dripping from tip to hilt with dazzling rubies and sapphires. The priceless sword had once belonged to the statue of village founder Sir Gossamer D’Glaze in the Corne-on-the-Kobb village square. But two months ago, during what is now referred to in trembling tones as ‘The Donkey Disaster’, the statue was destroyed. Ever since that day the villagers of Corne-on-the-Kobb had been taking it in turns to watch over Sir Gossamer’s bejewelled sword, give it a daily jewel massage and read it a bedtime story.

      Betty yawned and slurped the final chunks of jellybean from her gums. She hadn’t a clue why the old sword needed guarding anyway. Granted it had been a glorious trophy hundreds of years ago, but now half the rubies had fallen off and the end was chipped. Betty had been using it as a back scratcher for the past two months when nobody was looking.

      There was a rapid knock at the vault door. Betty’s wrinkles wrinkled in wonder. Who could it be at this time of night? Nobody came knocking in Corne-on-the-Kobb in the middle of the night unless they were sleepwalking or they’d lost their house. Perplexed, Betty squeaked her wheelchair over to the door and pulled it open.

      “Oh,” she croaked, “Hello, dear. What brings you out at this time of night?”

      There was no answer, just a swift flash of white wood as the cricket bat swung down and spanked Betty on the top of her head. With a pitiful whimper she crumpled to the stone floor like a soggy bag of spuds.

      The alarm didn’t wake Mayor Rattsbulge at first; he just wiped the dribble off his chin, grunted and rolled over. He was having a cracking dream about hog roasts, and really didn’t want to wake up before he’d reached the apple sauce. But then the noise seeped through the non-food part of his brain (a tiny section squeezed away behind the locum hamburgarium) and he leapt out of bed as if he was covered in bees. He threw on his extra-large dressing gown and blundered out of his extra-large bedroom on to the pitch-black landing, tripping over the banister and tumbling down the stairs. He bounced at the bottom (thanks to his six bowls of jelly for pudding) and landed rather gracefully on his blubbery feet. Mayor Rattsbulge rushed out of the front door, stopping only to grab a Cumberland sausage from the jar on the hall table. It took him a good three minutes to heave himself to the other side of the lamplit village square, where a small crowd of villagers in their pyjamas had gathered by the door to the village vault.

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