WHAT THE BUTLER SAW ......
IN THE RAIN
It was a dark and stormy night. Really! Dark and stormy that is. Sickly chartreuse lightning flickered fitfully over a frightened city, as wind-swept sheets of rain laid siege against shuttered doors and windows. Thunder boomed and cracked, as the fierce storm winds eviscerated hapless clouds scudding over the dim face of a wan moon. Moonlight failed to pierce the lowering clouds, racing before the storm yet to come, leaving the streets shrouded in dank and total darkness. The streetlights had all been darkened; not even a traffic light was ablink. This was a time to seek safety from the elements, as they whipped up a night fit for a witches sabbath.
Two dim cones of yellowish-orange light appeared and gradually brightened, as a lonely yellow cab plowed through flooded streets carrying a lone, desperate passenger. What hellish reason would force anyone to travel through streets ripped from the sound stage of "The Perfect Storm?" The cab slewed to a skidding stop in front of a massive, bleak, elongated building that exuded a palpable aura of malevolent menace and impending doom. There followed a pregnant, silent pause as the winds hushed to observe this anomaly.
The cab's passenger door suddenly opened, and the interior light snapped on spotlighting a slender, graceful, feminine form clad completely in black. Even before she spoke a word, you knew this was a foreign import new to these gritty mean streets. "This the place, sweetheart?" growled the cabbie, in a voice roughened by too many cheap cigars and far too many shots of cheap rot-gut. She bent her head over a much-folded scrap of paper, trying to read the scribbled street number in the margin. "Oui" she replied, and passed a fistful of crumpled bank notes over the seat back to the waiting palm. "Keep ze change.!"
"Right, as if I ever give back change" muttered the urban hack, coughing wetly into his palm.
Stepping onto the sidewalk was like stepping into a cold mountain stream at full flood! Icy water rushing past her ankles ruined her black velvet stiletto heels and elicited a shrill imprecation: "Non mais je rêve, un temps à ne pas mettre un chien dehors et moi on me tire de mon lit, par tous les écureuils il y a intérêt à ce qu'il y ait un bon vin chaud qui m'attend...".
The returning winds immediately wrenched her lacy black parasol from her hands, spinning it across the moon's bleak face before impaling it on a nearby lamp-post. "Saleté de vent ! On en fait plus des comme ça, en plus !"
muttered the hapless fugitive, clutching her sodden fedora on to her lank and dripping hair plastered by the gusts against her cheek, "Alex better have a really good reason for this emergency meeting!"
The cabbie wordlessly watched his passenger enter the maelstrom of wind and water, backlit by the ceaseless play of sheets of lightning against the sickly moonlight. Slamming the door shut returned the street to total darkness, as the cab inched away from the curb, removing the safe haven of its headlights from the desolate street.
Kicking off her sodden shoes, Zelda dashed to the imposing dark door, barely able to make out the discreet "MR" brass plaque as the lightening continued to flicker above her. She pressed and pressed the bell without getting any response. "Great, no power, no door bell!" She dashed back to the curb but the cab was long gone. Sheets of rain thoroughly soaked her as she frantically searched for a way into the building. The door and walls were too thick, and the storm too loud, for her to attract anyone's attention.
Then, in a momentary flicker of lurid light, she espied an old drain pipe at the corner of the building, which ran past an open window on the third floor. Whispering "Nancy Drew be with me tonight" Zelda began to shimmy up the drain pipe, fatally ripping her sleek black stockings and causing major damage to the rest of her ensemble. Our plucky adventurer, after innumerable slips and and near-falls, finally reached the window just as the ancient drain pipe began separating from the bricks. A final desperate leap landed her draped over the windowsill as the drain pipe fell towards the distant sidewalk with a resounding crash. A final belly flop dumped her damply onto a cold marble floor. Water pooled around her as she tried to take her bearings in the darkness.
Gazing out of the window, Zelda mused "Well, this is just dandy. I'm inside now ... but with no way out until the power comes back on."
To Be Continued .....
[taking notes yet?]
[noticed any clues?]
[yes, clues!]
[you know someone's dead somewhere don't you?]