Episode 3
Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3 | Episode 4 | Episode 5 | Episode 6 | Facts
Watson here. What’s on my mind, you ask. (Aileen asks, ‘Watson, what’s off?’ Well, Woof. Woof, woof, woof.)
My brain’s a scramble. That’s not absolutely accurate. It would be truer to say it’s mince! (I like mince, when I can get it; with lots and lots of gravy.) Actually, you know what it really is like, my brain right now? It’s like a dog’s dinner!
But, having scratched my head with both paws and had a good scratch everywhere with all four, it strikes me that, all bundled together, the clues have a definitely literary whiff.
On the one paw (left for fishy, right for rat – remember that), well this one’s the left. So, on the left, haddock smelling, trout reeking, pilchard stinking paw, there’s Otto Dafé the K.B.E. agent. Otto’s reading 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. Hmm. I don’t like him. He smells of an opened tin of tuna doesn’t he? He is
What a thin disguise his name is: a twist on Auto-da-Fé, in which things get burned – maybe even books! Horror! Frankly, I hope he’s at book number 1000. I’d like to see the back of him. If we did we could probably go home, which would be good because I’m missing my basket.
Aileen didn’t even notice him leaving the café – Dafé leaving the café – how can you not notice that?! Talking to Kyle, that’s how. Grrrr. And she’s so delighted to be able to shout “Follow that cab!” as if she’s in some film! When here am I doing all the work! A real mutt, me! A real dog’s body!
Still on the left, what’s with Kyle’s t-shirt? Dexys Midnight Runners? I can smell cod. Who are they? A pack of wild dogs? Narf! You think I know nothing? They sang that song “Come on Aileen” wasn’t it? Was it? What’s he up to?
Let’s shift to the right paw – the rat sniffer. There’s something about the number four. I feel it in all my paws. It keeps cropping up. Although, it’s not in the book Aileen’s reading – Prairie City, Iowa: Three Seasons At Home – and it should be. I’ve communed with the Prairie Dogs. They agree it’s freaky. Iowa thanks to those dogs.
So, where does that leave us?
My right paw twitches when I sniff that dossier of lost books. Homer, Aeschylus, Sappho. All Greeks. More importantly, lost or STOLEN? And then destroyed. The Homer too funny? The Aeschylus too sad? The Sappho too naughty? Then there’s the Book of Jasher, mentioned in the Bible. Would that be an ancient reference to Gnasher I wonder? Another dog’s dinner? But surely a clue?
But, one book has been found. The Dumas Club. (Doom ah, remember?) That book, left in an Iowa City café, has been picked up by someone out there, yeah yeah (I’m wagging as I write this). I’m tracking it.
But what is the rat of rats, the king rat that makes my right paw go beserk and baff me on the back of the head? It’s those cupcakes. Lyn or Lynx (now those are truly scary cats) has a clue in hers: the wizard’s hat, like the Christchurch Wizard, Christchurch New Zealand which is where we’re off to next. (Not Christchurch England, which is on the Jurassic Coast. Dinosaurs. Mm. Don’t forget them!) And there’s Aileen’s cupcake with the hand rising from the grave. But I think that’s more a mouse, scuttling away. A red herring! Fishy not rat. See how my brain works?
As that famous detective said to my namesake, “elementary, my dear Watson.” Now what’s elementary in all this? Oh dear. Maybe it’s as big a dog’s dinner as when I started! I’ve made a list of all the facts I have. I’ll just have to hang on, gnaw away at it. And see you next in New Zealand, when you might find out a bit more about my hunting dog pose. Where did I learn that then, eh?
The Lost Book is an animated web series where you wrote the plot.
