by Robin Hillard
Sandra was helping her Uncle at Archie’s Antiques when her friend Peter Gale came in with an elderly man who looked like a smaller version of his grandfather.
“That must be Great Uncle Alfred,” she whispered.
Sam nodded, like his niece he had been looking forward to meeting old Mr Gale’s elder brother.
“I thought Grandad could spin some yarns,” Peter had told them, “but you should hear Great Uncle. He’s been all over the country and there isn’t much he hasn’t done.”
“So the boy’s been talking about me, eh?” the old man said, fixing Sandra with his sharp blue eyes, “What’s he been saying?”
“That you’ve got some interesting stories.”
“Interesting eh? Not what he said last night,” he said, turning to Peter. “If I didn’t know better I’d think you were trying to shut me up. We had a few folk over,” he told Sandra. “Young chap from down the road, thought he was tough. So I told him how I killed a man.”
Sandra was intrigued. She would have asked for more details, but Sam’s friend, Edward Destranger, had just come into the shop.
“Straight murder it was!” Great Uncle Alfred was obviously pleased with himself.
“Mr Destranger here’s a policeman.” Peter made it sound like a joke, but Sandra guessed he was warning his great uncle.
“I’m retired,” Edward Destranger said quickly as he headed towards the back of the shop. Great Uncle Alfred grabbed his arm.
“They’ll never hang me for this one,” he said.
“Only because they’ve abolished the death penalty,” Peter muttered under his breath.
“Stop fussing, boy. The fellow was no loss. And it was meant to be a joke. Not that I didn’t want to get rid of the man.
“It happened when I was in the west,” he continued, “I was doing a bit of prospecting, north of Kalgoorlie, “And there was this little pub, all that was left of old mining town. It was quite a meeting place for old timers. Till this fellow came up from the city and tried to buy it. He said the building was ‘historic’; he wanted to put a fence around it, and turn it not one of those museum-villages – for the tourists. But what about us? We’d have to buy a ticket whenever we wanted a drink.
“There was a bit of an argument. It could have turned nasty, but somebody switched on the T.V. The footy. So we all shut up.
“We didn’t think of the fellow again till after the game. When we saw he was still there. Fast asleep.
“Dreaming of snakes he was. So I gave my mates a bit of a nudge and asked the old girl behind the bar for a couple of needles. She didn’t know what I was going to do,” he said to Destranger. “So it wasn’t her fault, what happened.
“I took the needles and held the points together, like a snake’s fangs, crept up to the fellow and jabbed them into his leg.
“The blokes were splitting their sides, waiting for him to start yelling. But he didn’t move. I jabbed the needles in again, a bit harder, but he didn’t even twitch. So I gave up.
“The old girl came out from behind the bar and grabbed his hand. Then she got all serious and stuck her fingers around the fellow’s wrist. ‘He’s dead!’ she said.
“It was a shock that did it. Him dreaming of snakes, and me pricking him. His heart thought he’d been bitten and just packed up.
“I was a bit sorry though,” Great Uncle Alfred said thoughtfully. “I wanted to frighten the fellow off but I wouldn’t have killed him.”
“Your great uncle tells a good story,” Edward Destranger said to Peter, after the old man left. “But don’t believe everything he says.”
How did Edward Destranger know Peter’s great uncle made up the tale?
© Robin Hillard 2009
You can find the solution to the mystery HERE
This entry was posted by rhillard on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Mystery Space.
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