The Case of the Black Marker Pen, and Where It Led Us
Timmy woke me up at seven, desperate to start investigating. I told him I definitely, one hundred per cent could not be seen to get up before ten, otherwise Mum and Dad would start making me do chores early in the morning. He dutifully went back to his room and carried on devising his master plan, and came back at five to ten. This time he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
There are three different shops in town where one could purchase a black marker pen. The first, the newsagent at the end of our road, hadn’t sold one in weeks, so Timmy crossed them off his clipboard (the kid loves clipboards). We then went to the supermarket. They hadn’t had any in stock for a few days, so Timmy gave them a question mark.
Then we went to the other newsagent at the top of the town. The small, smelly man who talks like Rod Stewart coughing said he had in fact sold a black marker pen the day before yesterday. ‘To whom?’ asked Timmy. Kid loves saying “whom”.
‘It was over that newfangled Internets,’ replied the small, smelly man. ‘Had to have it delivered to the woods on the other side of the town. No name or nothin’.’
‘To the woods!’ cried Timmy. I suggested that we ask the small, smelly man for more details, but Timmy was adamant, and just kept on crying ‘To the woods!’
So we went to the woods, to the spot where the black marker pen had been delivered. And this is what we found.
‘A lightbulb?!’ cried Timmy. ‘How devillishly incongruous!’
‘Mm,’ I said.
We looked around a bit more but could find nothing else out of the ordinary. So, suitably confused, we took the lightbulb home to add it to the evidence pile. Which currently consists of one lightbulb. Then Timmy retired to his bedroom (or his office, as he insists we refer to it) to “speculate on the lightbulb’s origin” and I went to have a sandwich.
