Thursday Morning Alert: Short Track Mind

Yesterday evening whilst sitting in the Hawley drawing room polishing my garden sabre and listening to the pleasant cooing of my prized peregrine, Pontius, I heard a knocking at the front door. As most of the servants had etherized themselves for the night, I crept into the foyer, garden sabre in hand and Pontius at my beck and call. I slowly opened the door and espied through the inky darkness a hunched figure outlined in nacreous moonlight. Perhaps a highwayman robber or worse, a J&B outside rep? Its stench was overwhelming. I called out "State your business ruffian or I or my trusted peregrine shall slay you where you stand and then use your bones to construct a noble looking harpsichord or perhaps a child's toy of whimsy!" The figure replied, "Stay your violence kind sir. I bring you tidings from Thomson Manor and my lord, the Abominable Dave Parrett!" And with that rum-slurred salutation, the Maconian halfwit hobbled up and with a hand that reeked of the nether regions of the human posterior, gave me a parchment scrawled with the ravings of a maniacal temperament. I gingerly held it to the lantern light and saw...