Posted by The Hooded Hood concludes the conundrum, with honourable mentions to Dancer, CSFB! and Xander for making some sense of the mystery. And now, the answers... on April 01, 2001 at 07:30:30:
#67 Part Two: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion World Tour: The Curse of the Blathervilles, or One of the People Gathered Here… is a Murderer (Continued and Concluded)
Note: There were two particularly astute replies to Part One of this story which discerned some of the plot. They contain spoilers of course, but if you'd like to look at them they're linked here:
Dancer's Comments and CrazySugarFreakBoy's DeductionsNow on with the show...
The Dramatis Personae: * Sir Mumphrey Wilton, the Eccentric Englishman with a mysterious past who invited the Lair Legion to Blatherville manor to hunt an alleged Beast of Blatherville on the lonely moors. * Visionary, a possibly fake man who might have been exposed by Sir Wesley Blatherville, the murdered man. * Cheryl, Duchess of Lake Superior, Visionary’s wife. How far might she go to protect her husband? * Asil Ashling, clone created by the diabolical Dr Moo, now amanuensis to Sir Mumphrey and Visionary’s greatest admirer. Did she kill on behalf of one of her two role models? * Meggan Foxxx, porn star and radio chat show host, and currently lover to a US secret service man. * Bill Reed a.k.a. Nats, high-flying superhero hunting the Beast of the Blathervilles across the Grimpen Mire. * Joe Pepper, a.k.a. ManMan, leg-man for the sentient weapon Knifey, also out in the dark looking for monsters. And finding them. * Miss Framlicker, Nats’ boss and scientist for the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation. Did Sir Wesley’s new discovery in some way threaten the business interests of her employer? * Miss Amanda Blatherville, the dead man’s newly-returned daughter, and inheritor of his estate. * Jerry Cuswirth, animal rights activist, anti-royalist, and Amanda’s boyfriend. How much did he want to get Amanda’s father out of the picture? * Viscount Darcy, the neighbouring landowner. His interest in Amanda thwarted, did he stoop to murder to get the Blatherville estate? * Mr Snipe, repossessions man, present to foreclose on Blatherville Manor tomorrow. Would he kill to prevent Sir Wesley from redeeming his property? * Jennings, supposed-butler revealed as a British Government security man. Has he seized Sir Wesley’s discovery on behalf of his employers? * Mrs Random, the aged housekeeper who remembers every detail of the history of the Blathervilles. * Inspector Gallowglass, the Scotland Yard man who is tasked with getting to the bottom of this grim and unholy business. * The Dark Knight, our shadow-stalking sleuth, who is about to reveal the truth… Now read on. Chapter Four: The Problem of the Cheeseboard “I thought it best to come in undercover,” DK told the assembly. “Now I have made my observations and drawn my conclusions. I know what is going on in Blatherville Manor. I know who has the missing discovery. I know why the Blessed Bung was stolen. I know who killed Sir Wesley and how. I know who is behind all of this. And I can surmise what kind of beast stalks the Grimpen Mire.” ManMan put out the fires on Nats by rolling him into a bog. “What happened?” he demanded. “I thought that monster was running away?”
“Then… where is Flapjack?” puzzled Asil.
“Back in London, in the Soho area, amusing himself with Exile’s credit card,” the urban legend replied. “I needed to be able to pass freely amongst you and observe what was going on here.”
“So it was you who went through my underwear?” shuddered Miss Framlicker.
“I searched everybody’s bags,” the Dark Knight replied. “I found the correspondence between Jerry and his hunt saboteurs proving that he was romancing Amanda to find out more about Sir Wesley’s experiments and whether they harmed animals.”
“Oh, Jerry!” gasped Amanda.
“And the letters between Snipe and Darcy about acquiring the Blatherville estate,” DK continued.
“Only to keep it safe for you, Mandy!” Darcy swore. “I had to. I couldn’t let you lose your inheritance. Now when I lo.. owe it to your father.”
“Now that’s entertainment,” Meggan Foxxx appreciated. She’d be having a word with Amanda later in private.
“So who was behind all of this?” Inspector Gallowglass demanded.
“I’ll just serve the tea while you’re explaining,” Mrs Random suggested.
A knightarang shattered the sea service into tiny shards. “I think not.” DK growled. “We’ve seen far too much tea and crumpets in this case already. Fresh cream scones, cheese sandwiches, a cheese board, and of course English tea with milk and sugar. All prepared by Mrs Random.”
“I am the housekeeper, dear,” Mrs Random protested.
“Housekeeper to a man who had just made an amazing genetic discovery,” DK emphasised. “A discovery that would be very interesting to those who…”
“Of course!” Asil realised. “We all ate that stuff, and it was all dairy products!”
“Oh no,” Cheryl scowled. “And who do we know that can control people through dairy products and is a world-class geneticist that would want Sir Wesley’s secret?”
Suddenly everyone was overcome with terrible stomach cramps, except Mrs Random who was already being controlled by the tea-nanites in her system.
“I don’t know?” the diabolical Dr Moo wondered, stalking into the library. “Who could it be?”
“It… it was,” Bill Reed moaned, trying to scrape the last of the foetid brown stuff that burned like napalm off himself. “But somehow it… well… it, er, it broke wind.”
“Broke wind? Farted? Squeezed cheese?” ManMan puzzled.
“It sprayed from it’s rear end, okay, and the stuff burned in air.”
“My, my,” chuckled Knifey. “So that’s the Beast of the Blathervilles. It all makes so much sense now.”
“It does?” ManMan and Nats chorused.
“It does if you have an extensive knowledge of medieval bestiaries,” Knifey replies. “Er, not that I do, but I just happened to remember this one. You’re battling a Bonnacon.”
It was most definitely footnote time for the two meud-splattered heroes, so while they are getting lectured by Knifey we’ll take some time to bring the reader up to date here too. This calls for a font change…
Illuminated picture-books of strange beasts were a popular industry for medieval monks. No collection or list going right back to Aristotle was complete without the account of the bonnacon, a large, hirsute, bovine creature whose horned curled back on themselves like a ram’s. It fled from hunters, but protected itself by voiding its bowels at its pursuers. This acrid, voluminous discharge could spread over three acres, burning trees, scorching hunting dogs, and blighting the land. If you don’t believe me, here’s a picture from the Harley Manuscript 4751 from around AD1230-1240.
”Aw shit!” ManMan complained. “The cheese attracts it, of course,” Dr Moo told the people in the library. “The bonnacon needs it to create it’s… effects. I had Mrs Random feed your two little heroes with the stuff so they’d be sure to gain its attention.” Chapter Five: the Bung and the Bang “It’s unstoppable!” Nats cried as the bonnacon ploughed after the two battered heroes. “We’ve got to keep moving. If it gets in front of us we’re doomed.” “Thank you for all your help,” Amanda Blatherville told Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “If not for you this would have been so much worse.” Next issue:The Lair Legion World Tour continues at the World Court in Switzerland as our heroes attend The Trial of the Magnetic Techbird. OK, so it’s a sub-plot that’s been waiting since 4th November ’99 to be tackled, so what? Guest starring Counsel for the Prosecution Herbert P. Garrick, Counsel for the Defence Lisa L. Waltz, and a whole host of expert witnesses and pundits. Meanwhile, Donar’s team visit the Bavarian Quaffenpukenfest and Dancer’s group find a Greek nudist beach. Don’t miss it. In Dancer’s case, bring cameras.
“Exactly,” concluded Knifey. “My advice is, don’t get behind it.”
Nats didn’t want to think about the nasty taste in his mouth. “Now he tells us.”
The ferocious bellowing indicated the bonnacon was coming back.
“Why us?” ManMan worried as he helped the scorched and battered Nats rise from his mud-wallow. “Why is it hunting us down?”
“I don’t understand,” Sir Mumphrey writhed. “Where did Wiggy find a bonnacon? And since when are you a baddie, Moo?”
Visionary glared at the Englishman in disbelief “You’re kidding, right? This is Lisa’s sister.”
“She is a big cow,” Asil squirmed.
“Sir Wesley didn’t find a bonnacon,” grunted Jennings. “He created one, using the old family legends as inspiration , taking DNA samples of the original beast from the Blessed Bung, and utilising revolutionary gene-resequencing codes he had developed.”
“Methods that belong to us now,” Davidowicz, Dr Moo’s talking rat lab-assistant gloated. “While she was under our control, Mrs Random was more than happy to fetch us the plans.”
“And you controlled Sir Wesley himself didn’t you?” the Dark Knight accused them, “Through the cheese for dinner. You made him conceal Ms Foxxx’s steak knife, and then when you has Mrs Random cut the lights he was forced to stab himself.”
Amanda stifled a sob.
“And you stole the Blessed Bung, right?” Cheryl guessed. “That was how the bonnacon could be safely handled. Every night it came to the library window for its cheese feed, the cheese that brought it ever more under your control. And for safety’s sake you used the Bung exactly as Sir Nigel must have done on the original monster. To… block it.”
“Eeew,” Miss Framlicker winced.
“Actually, I controlled Jennings to do it,” Dr Moo replied. “After all, there’s no sense taking over a household with mind-controlling dairy products and then sticking your own hand up a mutated cow’s caustic backside, is there now?”
“She really is a villain, isn’t she?” Viscount Darcy recognised.
“And she’s going down!” the Dark Knight promised. “You see, I’ve been avoiding the milk products.”
“Of course you havem” Dr Moo agreed as Davidowicz caught the urban legend from behind with a lactose spray. “That’s why we have to do it the hard way with you.”
Mumphrey finished fiddling with his temporal pocketwatch and moved the crippling effects of Moo’s dairy devilry ten minutes into the future. “Now, madam,” he called. “I think we must trouble you to give up.”
The wrathful Dark Knight agreed.
“We should have brought the Blessed Bung with us,” ManMan realised. “That would keep it’s power contained for long enough to fight back.”
The terrible bovine stormed forward through the night.
Suddenly the Dark Knight loomed up in front of it. “Got milk?” he asked it.
The Bonnacon angled its attack and hurled the urban legend away with a twist of its massive head. DK rolled with the blow and came up standing. “Keep it busy,” he commanded the others. “Keep it looking at us.”
“Why?” ManMan asked, dancing forward and drawing the monster’s attention for long enough to be trampled under foot-wide hooves. “Urk.”
The Dark Knight watched Nats get tossed thirty feet aside into a nearby marsh. “Because I don’t want it working out what is going on behind it. We recovered the stolen Blessed Bung.”
“It was stolen?” ManMan groaned.
“What is going on behind it,” gurgled Nats.
“We have a man using the bung as it was meant to be used,” DK explained. “Well, a fake man anyway.”
“I’m real, dammit!” Visionary called, anger giving him the impetuous to hammer home the obstruction.
The bonnacon attempted to empty its lower intestine over the yellow-coated rectal intruder, but the Blessed Bung held firm.
“Now!” Knifey called to Joe Pepper. While it’s filled with inflammible gases it can’t void!”
ManMan leaped forward and plunged Knifey into the Beast of the Blathervilles.
There was the sound of a nine ton cow bursting.
Being the nearest Joe Pepper caught the worst of the decompressing bonnacon. There was a yellow-blue flame and then a lot of innards became outards over the Elvis impersonator. The Blessed Bung shot from its position like a bullet and bounced off Visionary’s forehead, sending the possibly fake man back into the Grimpen Mire.
The Dark Knight rose from cover and inspected the remains of the monster. Well, the remains within five hundred years. “Good job,” he told Knifey.
“Urgle,” answered ManMan.
“Thank you for the use of your laundry,” ManMan replied.
“And your hosepipe,” added Nats.
“Glad I could help m’dear. I’m glad to see Blatherville Manor saved as well. It’s what Wiggy would have wanted.”
“Mr Jennings arranged an advance on daddy’s genetic invention,” Amanda explained. “Then Mz Foxxx said something to Mr Snipe and he started running and we haven’t seen him since.”
“And then Mr Cuswirth fell into the Grimpen Mire,” Viscount Darcy added happily. “Eleven times.”
“And now the two of you are thinking about an estate merger,” Cheryl noted wryly.
“Well, perhaps a little joint venture to see how it goes,” Miss Blatherville flushed.
“I am just glad that they finally have that big heifer that created me in custody,” contributed Asil. “I hope they throw her in the Tower of London and toss away the key.”
“I don’t think we have heard the end of the diabolical Dr Moo,” Visionary warned through a head so swathed with bandages that he looked like the Invisible Man.
“But the Curse of the Blathervilles is finally broken,” Sir Mumphrey noted, “Now we can get on with our normal lives. C’mon Asil m’dear, we have to go see the Bishop if Bootle about that affair of the singing stirrup-pump.”
“Er, thank you for a lovely time,” Miss Framlicker told Amanda and Darcy uncertainly. “Do call us again if you have any more mutant cow problems. Or at least as soon as Nats’ hair has grown back.”
Nats just sat in his wheelchair and plotted revenge upon the world.
Homework: Avid LL-watchers who want to do a little background research in readiness for the next chapter are directed to the following required reading: CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s excellent Lair Legion World Tour crossover Define the Word “Hero”, which appears a little further down the board. # 15: Untold Tales of the Return of the Lair Legion, featuring Magnetic Techbird at his most heroic. The Journal of Sir Mumphrey Wilton, Extract Eighteen: In which we investigate the mysteries of a second-hand archvillain’s stronghold and annoy the wrong person, where DarkHwk and Magnetic Techbird go one-on-one. The Journal of Sir Mumphrey Wilton, Extract Nineteen: In which Mumphrey takes on the inconceivable Yurt. This could be a really short extract., featuring the capture and arrest of the Magnetic Techbird.