Strange Stories

When the famous poetess passed out in her mashed potatoes on Christmas Eve, 1978, her husband rolled his eyes and her two children carried on glumly chewing. It was a semi-regular performance, the passing out act. George wondered how he'd ended up marrying the silly bitch. Once on a literary tour, they'd been besieged by girls who seemed to regard him with envy for having such unfettered access to their mentally unstable idol. He'd happily switch places with any of them, or the middle-aged sad-sack men who worried at her ankles at luncheons. Two years ago she'd had a brief affair with an English teacher. To George's dismay, she came back to him. A minute passed and the kids, whose expressions these days were normally blank, started to look nervous. Amelia Porter might have been a dab hand at a sonnet, but she still needed oxygen. George had another glass of mulled wine. He wouldn't be surprised if she'd learned to breathe through her ears. Another minute pas...

Homer Featherstonhaugh (pronounced Fan-shaw) stood in the cathedral praying to God that his lunch wouldn’t repeat on him. A minor royal had been beaten to death with a bust of St Thomas Becket. There was blood everywhere, and any chance of the fellow lying in state so mourners could see him at rest had been dashed across the cobblestones, alongside his coltish good looks. ‘He’d just come down from Ascot’ said Chief Inspector Worthing of Scotland Yard. ‘Not a particularly religious chap, either, so what he was doing here is a mystery in itself.’ ‘I only left him a few minutes!’ declared Sally O’Connor, the dead man’s PA, a good Irish girl who’d just about stubbed out her accent, though it still snuck through when she was excited. ‘I can’t think why he wanted to come to this place. Normally, Lord Wallace has to be bullied by his mother to attend church on Christmas Day. But we were heading home in a Hackney carriage when he saw the spire over the rooftops and said that he needed to go th...

1 It was a few days into the year 3000 and I sat in my office on 59th St, waiting for either money or a girl to fall into my lap. As it happened, I got both.   Unlike the fancy qualifications hanging on my wall, the girl wasn't a hologram. She looked like she belonged more to the age of telegrams. She wore a thick ermine coat and a scarf with a couple of fox heads at the end.   'I'm here about  Daddykins ' she said.   ' Daddykins ?'   'My father.'   'I see' I said, 'and how can I help  Daddykins ?'   'He's looking for a nemesis.'   I sighed and picked up a remote. Pointing it at the wall, I projected an image of a notice, headed NEMESIS WANTED. The notice read: "Gentleman villain seeks nemesis for the usual mayhem." It was signed "Mortimer Wilkins".   'I don't suppose he'd be responsible for this, would he?'   'That's daddy' she said, without much enthusiasm.   'I got it in m...

They called her the Queen of Crime, did the readers and writers of The Times of London, 1922, not because she competed in those pages for the attentions of such railway bookstore doyennes as have characterised our culture section of late, but because she'd walked into Farringdon's (a jeweller's) and almost walked out with a cache of diamonds worth the cost of a small island. Dressed in widow's weeds, a black veil, and a pair of pointed heels, her dress was inclined to suggest, in such a place, a woman disposing of her late husband's love gifts, so as to more happily enter a long retirement from gay society. The Queen attracted a young salesgirl and on the pretence of showcasing her wares, lured her behind a curtain. At which point out came the pistol, only the poor girl's shrill shriek - before the devilish dame forced a leather-gloved hand over her victim's mouth - enough to alert the floor that something was amiss. Alas, it was a good ten minutes - during ...

1 Daisy worked in a prison, but not as a warden or anything like that. She was a counsellor, and initially not a very qualified one. Not officially qualified at all, in fact, but she got the position because of a commitment to learning on the job while taking online courses, as well as the prison's desperate need for someone to fill the role. She was a cheerful woman with what her father used to call ‘child-havin’ hips’, an appealingly fat bum, and a well-managed pile of black hair that in connection with her glasses gave her the look of a ‘50s pinup. You could imagine her looking at you over her shoulder with a suggestive wink. On her first day, she met a woman called Barbara "Babs" Portnoy, whose complaints were endless and, on that day, revolved around a Jewish compulsive masturbator she'd had to deal with. Just as Daisy was wondering why the man's creed was necessary to mention, Babs launched into a visceral description of what she'd seen on entering the m...