[MalReynolds]

Part 1:

The vista was pleasant enough. I say “pleasant enough” because there was one very noticeable blemish on the horizon – thick black smoke pouring into the perfectly affable summer sky. The sun tried its hardest to shine through the smog, but the smog would have none of it, and the sun eventually gave up, gradually shifting positions until it had retreated behind a hill.

When the night sky came, the flames from the six story apartment building leapt into the air with reckless abandon. They reminded a few passerbies of young vixens at a concert hall, and remarkably reminded other passerby of old women at a retirement complex. The blaze was both controlled and free, condemning and at the same time freeing.

The vista, ignoring the fire for the present, had many other nice features. There was a book store, a frame shop, a meat market, green grocers, and several homes. In the center of the town was a square surrounded by buildings, and in the middle was a fountain. The fountain was unfunctioning, as there had been a terrible drought that swept the area in the preceding months, making the fire all the more treacherous.

A small crowd gathered to watch the building crumble, and began to whisper in worries to each other whether or not their homes would be affected.

“I certainly hope not, I did pay a right lot of money for my house. I shouldn’t be punished because this slap-shod building caught alight.”

“What? What did this building do to deserve this?”

The first man paused. “Well, it did something, otherwise it wouldn’t have happened. Things like this just don’t happen for no bleedin’ reason.”

The second man shrugged, accepting the answer with some trepidation, as if he was given a pill designed for a horse in suppository form. “I suppose your right. Smiting and all that.”

“Smiting.”

When something catches on fire, all of the energy that was put into whatever is being consumed in flames is released. Technically speaking, if you burn a desk, you’re releasing all the energy in a desk. If you burn a puppy, you’re releasing all the energy in the puppy – although the frantic way they run, they’re looking to expend as much as possible before they expire.

The blaze, while being quite blasé, did have one remarkable feature. Almost everyone escaped unharmed from the flames, including a caged bird that belonged to a squat tired man named Reginald Druthers. He was carrying the bird under his arm as he fled through the front door of the building hours earlier.

I say most people escaped unharmed, which is true. Every tenant escaped the building, save for one. Frenchie Rawles, a quite disagreeable man with a short wick and quick temper, was presently expending all the energy his body could offer. He would have been running around had he not, at the time, been dead.

Druthers dusted off his slacks as he stared at the fire, haunted by what he had seen inside. He turned to the man on his right, a man who normally occupied the town square during the daylight hours as a cheerful organ grinder, monkey and all, and said quietly, “That fire is quite the problem, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes. I don’t think it’s a solution in any case.”

“No,” Druthers said, frowning. The worry lines creased his face like leather that had folded too many times. Druthers was a man prone to frowning instead of smiling, as it took less energy to let his face droop than to try and support it with his ever waning facial musculature. In his youth, his facial musculature was admirable, and he would smile all the time before deciding that it was too much effort and there was too little to be cheerful about. At the present, there was very little to be cheerful about.

“There’s a man burning in my apartment,” he said finally.

“Oh,” the organ grinder replied. And that was all he could say. In situations such as these, it is impossible to say anything else, as “Oh” quite succinctly covers the thousands of words flying through your head, most of which contain the letters “O” and “H” anyway. “That’s a bit of a bother then, isn’t it?”

Druthers frowned – and as he was already frowning, this turned into a freakish double-frown. “Yes. Yes it is. I don’t quite know what to do about it, either.”

The organ grinder shrugged. “Well, good luck with all that, then.”

“Thank you,” Druthers said, retreating one of the frowns. He now frowned singularly. It was as close as he would come to a smile for the time being.

The next day, when the blaze died down, the body of Mr. Rawles was found in the flat of Reginald Druthers, and without a proper alibi, he was detained for questioning. As it was a small hamlet, he was detained indefinitely for a spell. When the police realized what they were doing was quite unreasonable, as Mr. Druthers had quite a fear of both automobiles, airplanes, horses, and pathways that curled into the hills, and he was not in the least a flight risk, they released him.

The first thing he did was contact a peculiar man whom he had been reading about days prior in a news magazine that had been unceremoniously distributed. There was a somewhat unfavorable article about a young man, who had somehow in his spare time managed to capture a wanted felon using a piece of string, a piece of tape, and a small British girl named Pip.

“Uh, yes, hullo. My name is Reginald Druthers and I’m in a spot of trouble. I was wondering if you could come out to Butterville. Yes, yes, the name does sound quite made up, doesn’t it? What’s that? No, I don’t plan on killing you when you get here. No, I don’t plan on kissing you, either. I seem to have – Well, I’m in a bit of trouble. I’m willing to pay quite a large amount if you could possibly exonerate –“

But the line had died after the word “amount” had been spoken.

Three days later, Sid Linner appeared on one of the curving roads leading from the hills into town. In one hand, he held a suitcase filled with pants, shirts, and sand.

“Would you slow down, Sid? You’re walking too fast for me.”

As soon as Pip caught up, he smacked her upside the head. “Let me take this in before you begin your incessant chatter. That right there,” he motioned with his hand, “that is the building that burned down.”

“Oh, you don’t say, do you? And your detective skills let you figure this right out? I thought the grocers might have burned down, instead of that charred skeleton of a building.”

Sid turned, and stared down at her. “You’re horrible. You’re really rotten and I don’t know why I keep you around.”

“Because you promised my parents, that’s why.”

“Oh, hush up. I know why I keep you around. Come on, then. We have to meet Mr. Druthers.”

Pip looked up at him. “You think he’s innocent?”

Sid shrugged. “Innocent or not, the man has money – at least, according to the records I could dig up. He’s the town planner.”

“Well, la-de-dah,” Pip spat. “Nothing remarkable about this place.”

“Except that it looks like it was stolen from Queen Elizabeth’s cleavage. This place looks older than… Something that’s very old.”

“Brilliant.”

“All I’m saying is that the man has a vision. And men with visions, especially visions that are realized, are also men with money. Which I happen to like. Now please, mark down the distance from the town to the hill so we can get started on billing him.”