Storyteller - Colin & Anne Brookfield (ebook and pdf reader .txt) 📗

return visit. She was just finishing the day’s accounts, when Madame made her appearance once again. Belinda immediately descended into fits of giggles at Madame B’s feline sense of the posh and mystical, until the quiet suggestions and flickering diamond finally had its ‘Svengali’ influence over her.

“What did you find out about Paul Lehmann?” Madame B enquired.

Belinda walked over to her bureau, removed a sheet of paper and read its contents to Madame B. When she had finished, Madame had a little more to say.

“I want you to pick up the watch that I have lain on the table, place it with the document right at the bottom of your handbag, and forget about it for the time being. Tomorrow, you will be present at the Wiggy court case with your handbag and contents.”

A few more instructions followed and then the sound of Madame’s claws clicking. Belinda awoke a minute later – alone of course.

Polly had also been informed about the part she was going to play in the following day’s proceedings. She was to flutter noisily against the outside of a courtroom window at our prearranged time. This was going to trigger a hypnotic programme into action that Madame had already placed in Belinda’s mind.

Madame brought them all up-to-date about her little games, and Polly was asked to be their open-window-listening-operative at the court. She had already reconnoitred the most appropriate sills at the courthouse.

On the following day, Wiggy’s case did not start well.

“You again!” bawled the judge.

The Clerk of the Court read out the charges.

“The cased violin that Constable McDonald discovered in the defendant’s carrying sack, has since been valued at over twenty five thousand pounds; its real owner has not yet been found, so there may well be more charges to follow.”

“You can’t keep your sticky fingers off other people’s valuables can you?” yelled the judge. “You are already facing a serious custodial sentence.”

At that second there was a flapping sound at the courtroom window, and somebody exclaimed rather loudly, “It’s a parrot!”

For some strange reason, Belinda found herself rummaging about in the bottom of her handbag, from which she withdrew a Rolex watch and a written document. Even more surprisingly, she found herself rising automatically from her seat and asked authoritatively for the courts indulgence, as she was in possession of new evidence. The judge reluctantly allowed it to be presented to the court.

“Someone left a mysterious parcel on my doorstep,” Belinda commenced. “Its wrapping paper had ‘Ernshaw Jewellers’ on it, and inside, I found a very valuable Rolex watch. Its back plate was only hand tightened, so I opened it.”

She placed the watch on the bench in front of the judge. On the inside of its back plate were inscribed the words:

‘Zum gefeierten Geiger Paul Lehmann, München Philharmonischen Orchesters’

She continued, “This translates from German as:

To the celebrated violinist Paul Lehmann, Munich Philharmonic Orchestra.

I have since done some research concerning Paul Lehmann. The distinguished violinist and his family were smuggled out of Munich, Germany in the late 1930s to escape the anti-Jewish pogroms. They were finally given sanctuary in England. However, in the first bombing raids on the British mainland, their house received a direct hit with no record of any survivors.”

Belinda turned to address the judge.

“Your Honour, Mr. Lehmann obviously did survive the explosion that killed the rest of his family, and he now stands before us in this court. Moreover, his amnesia is what resulted from the violence and impacts associated with that event.”

“This does not prove it has anything to do with the defendant,” replied the judge dismissively. “It’s more likely, you have managed to identify the victim from whom these items were stolen in the first place.”

“I haven’t finished yet,” retorted Belinda, “I should like to add, that if the amateur police investigators had bothered to look inside this watch at the appropriate time, then it would have been the swindling jeweller Ernshaw who went to prison, instead of poor old Mr. Wiggy.”

This raised such a furore of excitement in the public gallery and so enraged the gavel banging judge, that no-one noticed Wiggy walk to the violin exhibit and place the instrument comfortably under his chin. He then took up the bow with the other hand.

The court uproar came to a shattering silence, as it gave way to what was described later, as the ‘music of angels’. All eyes turned to Wiggy – alias Paul Lehmann – as he filled the air magically and exquisitely with the opening bars of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. It brought the court to tears and even the crusty old judge was moved to silence.

Of course, Skungee’s old friend would never walk the roads again. Paul was now reunited with fellow musicians, although not in his home country due to the ongoing hostilities.

The team heard that after the jeweller had been sent to prison, Paul had adopted the man’s homeless wire haired terrier, Spud.

Had it not been for their avian window recorder Polly, they wouldn’t have known much of the dramas in the court, and not forgetting Skungee, who had managed to mingle amongst the feet outside the courthouse, where he had heard Belinda talking to a friend.

“I’m totally confused, where did I get all that information, and where did I get the courage to stand up in court and say all those things.”

Other books

For other information

 

 

Written or recorded by Colin Brookfield please refer to my website  -  Fom the address bar and not the Search Engine:

 www.colinbrookfield.co.uk

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The Satanic Conspiracy

The Wizards Apprentice

The Ambivalent Gene (Parts 1 and 2)

Pet Door Alert

The Curse of Ignorance

Animal Welfare in Cyprus (Anne Brookfield)

Imagination Gives You Wings 

Poems

A ‘Walkabout’ Need

Did the summers of yore have that quality edge?

Is a memory fickle? Is a child’s given pledge?

But Nature feeds eyes each waking minute;

eyes need their toys to refoliate the spirit.

 

For deep in the soul there’s a ‘walkabout’ need;

an aspect within that a city can’t feed.

So the mind reinvents, all the best is assigned,

‘till its here and now fades to a past gilded kind.

 

If it’s not in the head, a mind can’t resort

to a ‘take-away’ picture or ‘take-away’ thought.

 

Where Stories Hide

Keep out! Warned the secret place,

but then there was intrusion,

Deep within its private space,

not meant for their inclusion.

 

A small twig snapped from underfoot,

and startled birds sent their reproof

to that which trespassed far below

their green and canopied aboreal roof.

 

Then silence (with uncommon haste)

forgave the crime, a censure made so meek

as it may shame a trespasser,

to offer then – the other cheek.

 

A mind it seems, had leapt a wall

and landed in this unknown place,

that knew of no impossibles

to mar its other-worldly face.

 

Such dreams too priceless to possess,

give more than is not there,

from their non-existent places

that only fertile minds can share.

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Publication Date: 06-16-2020

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