Murder on the port bow

Murder on the port bow



John Huzzlegun was sitting on the deck of a cruise liner heading nowhere in particular, it was the most expensive mystery tour he had ever participated in, as he lazily flicked through his copy of ‘Boats, Ride ‘em, row ‘em, He glanced up to see the waiter walking past, carrying with him an odour of murder, a strangely named perfume favoured by upper crust American society, although to John it stank of the level of high society he feared he may never reach.  As he watched the waiter strut away he heard a scream from the port bow, “hmm…” thought John, perhaps murder is afoot. He stood up from his chair and raced off in the direction the scream had emanated from.
Upon arriving at the port bow he was delighted to see someone had been brutally slain, he had always loved a good murder mystery. The victim lay face down in a pool of blood, John had yet to be sure if the victim was dead so he shot him in the back, surely enough the body didn’t move and so John proceeded to raid the corpse of all valuables, leave the crime scene and return after several minutes when a crowd had gathered. When the boat security approached John to question him, John, so as to avoid suspicion told the police he did not shoot the victim in the back. “In fact,” said John to the officer, “I don’t even have a gun.”
“What’s that then?” asked the portly officer, pointing at John’s gun.
“That is a clever painting” replied John casually, and ran off.

As John slammed the door to his cabin, he proceeded to flush the gun down the toilet so as to get rid of the evidence. John breathed a sigh of relief until he realised he was in next doors cabin. “Pigfuckers!” shouted John and rolled up his shirtsleeves and attempted to reach into the toilet and pull the gun back up, just as John had succeeded in pulling out the dripping wet gun from the U-bend, a voice from behind startled him.
“Excuse me, but what are doing pulling semi-automatic weaponry from my toilet?”
“I am the ships toilet inspector,” proclaimed John, “and how do you explain this?” (John held up the gun) The diminutive man looked puzzled, “Well this is peculiar; I am the ships toilet inspector.”
John got confused and shot the man. Leaving the man sprawled quite dead on the bathroom floor of cabin 14, John ran back to his cabin where he decided he would start a new life in Cuba as a wardrobe. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door, John wondered who they were as they had interrupted his wardrobe impressions, luckily Johns unspoken query was answered when the people at the door answered (rather churlishly, John noted) “Open up Mr. Huzzlegun, this is the police!”
Before John had time to wonder how the police had got onto the ship so quickly although it was adrift in the Atlantic Ocean and hours away from any coastline, the door was forced open and several armed officers burst in to cabin 13 to see a completely naked, shaved and varnished John Huzzlegun.
Acting purely on reflex, John unloaded the remaining bullets from his berretta into the three officers rather haphazardly, so haphazardly in fact he shot himself in the thigh and the forearm. As the smoke cleared, John realised he in quite the fix, he quickly dressed and stumbled to the top deck as best he could with torn tendons in both his arm and thigh along with general fatigue from loss of blood.  As John climbed the stairs he noticed he was slipping into shock, he quickly stopped himself going into shock by not going into shock.
         John knew he would get a row if they found the several bodies he had murdered in cold blood, and to complicate matters yet more, he couldn’t remember if he had hidden them cunningly out of sight where they would never be found, or if he had simply run off. John quickly cast his mind back to the events that had unfolded in cabin 13 and immediately realised he had just run off leaving the bodies piled over the floor. After some thought John realised he would need an alibi. Racing to the ships over-priced restaurant he started scribbling down his hastily thought-out alibi on the back of the wine menu. Sadly, after several hours of hard emancipation, careful consideration of the situation and a watertight alibi had been written, John came to realise the menu was laminated and none of his writings had appeared, this, combined with the fact that John didn’t have a pen caused quite the conundrum. Suddenly, as John was about to search for a pen, he inadvertently slammed his face onto the table he was resting on and, upon awaking several moments later realised he had completely forgotten his alibi. John was shocked at this sudden turn of events and found that smearing peanut butter over his nipples didn’t help the matter. John jumped to his feet and winced with the pain of his gunshot wounds, as he didn’t have a first aid kit with him he had to suffice by blowing on them, sadly, this did not alleviate the loss of blood and so John passed out on the heavily carpeted restaurant floor.

         When he came to, John was propped up against a large plank of chipboard in the witness box of a courtroom, he had awoken just in time to catch the end of the honourable Judge Twinkle twinkle little star’s speech regarding the new method of trying criminals whilst they were unconscious and recovering from critical injuries, dubbed, ‘Operation The Bastard Doesn’t Stand a Chance.’
         John thought this method of trial was remarkably unfair; his spirits were lowered yet more when, upon glancing to see who his lawyer was, it appeared to be a heavily buttered jam sandwich. Although the fact that the Prosecuting Lawyer appeared to be a warm cup of sweet tea did remove some of Johns anxiety.
          John cast his eyes back to the Judge and noticed he appeared to be sweating quite heavily, very heavily indeed thought John. Although John soon realised this was not so, as, upon closer inspection, the Judge turned out to be a bowl of water. His suspicions aroused, John looked questioningly over at the jury and was not overly surprised to see not several members of the public with unbiased opinions and of mixed gender, but several dozen tins of burgundy paint. John cocked an eyebrow and swiftly assessed that he couldn’t possibly be tried and found guilty, as no one in the courtroom (aside from John himself) had the powers of speech or movement. John laughed confidently knowing he would escape from his killing spree unscathed by law and stared hopefully at the bowl of water waiting for it to call a mistrial….

After several moments of waiting, John got impatient and acted purely on instinct, leaping over the witness box; he violently ate the jam sandwich that was his defence
lawyer, spun on his heels and cart wheeled over to the prosecuting lawyer and promptly drank him. In the midst of this madness, a bloodlust swept over John and he fiendishly ripped the lids from the jury and carefully spent several hours painting the walls of the courtroom a lovely shade of burgundy. It was at this time that an interior decorator walked into the courtroom and commented on what a lovely job John had done with the freshly painted walls. The decorator, who introduced himself as Dr. Baube then went on to ask John if he would be interested in a job in his company, sadly John got confused and shot the man with a gun he had, until now, kept hidden under one of his fingernails. As John was about to ravage the body for any valuables, several armed policeman burst into the room, John knew the game was up and was about to see how many of the officers he could take out with him in a blaze of glory when one of the officers explained that Dr. Baube was not an interior decorator nor, strangely enough, a doctor. His real identity was unknown but was rumoured to be Mr. Perhaps of 92 Wicker Drive. He was in fact a brutal serial killer whose trademark was walking into courtrooms, claiming he to be an interior decorator and offering to recruit his chosen victim for a fictitious company, and then would eat the person when they weren’t looking. John, in killing this monstrosity was proclaimed a hero and in celebration of this, was awarded a house in Bedfordshire and his own canoe. Sadly, John didn’t know where Bedfordshire was and so the house was rendered completely useless to him. After several days of sitting in his canoe, John decided to eat it, and so was crowned canoe eating champion of the universe. Sadly for John, he was allergic to eating canoes, and, just after finishing of the final mouthful, John had a powerful allergic reaction and died.
                                                           THE END