Murder 9/95


Scene 1.

Couch central, as ever.  To left, a staircase has appeared, upon the
lower steps of which is a face-down corpse with an ice-pick in the back
in a pool of blood.  To right is a simple chair; about are general
party devices.  When they enter, all characters will be wearing black
suits, black ties, just like the corpse.  Across the back is stretched
a banner which reads "Welcome Arsenio".

D enters, carrying a large block of ice.

D : I've got the ice.

M entering : You idiot!  It's supposed to be for drinks.

D : Can't we just share one large drink?

M : Twat.

D : All right, I'll just wait until it melts down to a reasonable size.
Should only take a few hours.

M : Cut it into smaller pieces, you useless idiot.  The guests will be
here soon.

[Doorbell, and Marie goes to open it.  D tries to break the slab of ice
with his fist, to no effect, then looks about for something more
effective.  Purposefully, he strides over to the corpse, and pulls the
ice pick out, which he uses to chip away at the block.  As he does
this, the guests enter (the children from "dreams" in party clothes),
and a gentle buzz of conversation starts up.

D joins M in front of the couch.  The block of ice has turned into a
bowl of perfect ice-cubes and a beautiful sculpture of M's face]

D : I still don't know why we're having a party.

M : It's for my long-lost cousin, dopey.

D : You mean the teenage psychotic who turned up on our doorstep
claiming to be your long lost cousin?

M : Look, when we moved into this flat, we had a "New Flat" party.
When Jay almost drowned on the boating lake, we had a "Near-Death
experience" party.  When your tooth fell out, we had a "Blood all over
the couch" party.  So when Arsenio turns up, we use it as an excuse for
a.. a..

D : A missing party party?

There is an explosion, and the door drops forward.  Conversation,
unsurprisingly, stops.  D shrieks, and jumps into the arms of M.  The
smoke clears, and Arsenio is revealed holding a recently fired rocket
launcher.]

M dropping D : Er... surprise?

A : A party?  For me?  How sweet!

D : Where've you been?  You haven't been back for three days?

A : Oh you know.. making legends, breaking hearts.  [Looks puzzled]
Hey, I didn't say when I was coming back, so how come you're having a
party for me?

M confidently : It's a surprise party.

A : But you didn't know whether I'd be here!

D improvising : That's the surprise.

J in a dressing gown (like Quentin's one in Pulp Friction) over his
suit, enters at the top of the stairs : What's going on?

[J descends the stairs gracefully, until he trips over the corpse.
Picking himself up, he looks accusingly at D and M]

J : Were you having a party?

D : Who, us?

M : No, of course not.

J : Who are these people? [indicating children]

D : Just a few friends who dropped by.

Child : Fine party this is.  I'm going.

J excitedly : See?  It is a party!  It is, it is!

M ignoring J : No, please stay.  It'll get better soon.

Child : Bollocks, I'm leaving.  Come on.

[The guests leave.  D and M slump on the couch.  A seems lost, so
tosses aside the bazooka with only a minor explosion, and sits in the
chair, scratching his right ear.  J turns to lecture :]

J : Now, how many parties have you had since we moved here?

D and M, mumbling : Seven.

J : And how many have you invited me to?

D and M : Mmmm.

J : How many?

D + M : None.

J : Look, I don't mind you having parties here, but it's my flat as
well as yours, so I think it's just a common courtesy to invite me to
them, instead of trying to hide them from me.  [Warming to his theme]
And another, will you stop leaving your junk on the ... gah! [He has
been pointing at the stairs, and turns to see the corpse]

D angry : Look, you can complain about our parties, moan about my
unusual sleeping patterns and excessive eating binges, but don't make
up crap about the gah.  We don't have a gah!  I don't even know what a
.. gah! [Now he has seen the corpse]

M : Isn't it an involuntary noise made by someone who has seen
something extremely..  gah!

[A wonders what the fuss is about, and casually wanders over to the
corpse.  He feels for a pulse, lifts the body up and prods the stomach
wound.   He sticks a finger in the pool of blood and sucks it
thoughtfully.]

A : Nah, s'not a gah.  Issa corpse.  Gunshot wound to the stomach, but
killed outright from an ice-pick applied at an angle of thirty two
degrees to the vertical in the back. 

J [the most shocked] : Gah!

[The cleaner enters, and sees the door on the floor.  Looks around, and
shrugs, then pushes the doorbell.  Even though it is not wired to
anything, a ringing is heard]

A : Come in.  The door's open.

[Cleaner, pausing only to un-surreptitiously pick the doorbell from the
door, enters]

C : What's going on?

M shocked : Th... there's a dead body!

C slightly angry : You do realise I charge extra for dead bodies?


Scene 2.

It is the box containing the critics from "The Muppet Show" - Waldorf,
and The Other One.

Waldorf : What do you think of it so far?

The Other One : They call this entertainment?  I wish I'd hadn't paid
good money to come and see this trash!

Waldorf : But you didn't - we were paid to come and review this facile
pastime.

TOO : Oh yeah.  What have you got so far? [leaning over to see W's
notepad]

W : It lacks eclat...

TOO scribbling furiously : Eclat...

W : and elan...

TOO : E-L-A-N.

W : Are you copying me?

TOO : R-U-....


Scene 3.

D, M and J are seated on the couch.  A and C are interrogating.  C has
a crumpled mac over her dinner suit.

A : You three were the only people in the house at the time of death,
which I estimate to be approximately 3.27 and twenty four point 3
seconds.  Therefore one of you must have done it.  Let's start with
you, coz, why did you do it?

M : What makes you think I murdered him?

A : Aha!  So you know it was murder.  But I never told you that.  How
do you explain that?

M : He had an ice pick sticking out his back - do you think he somehow
managed to very accurately stab himself directly in the spinal cord?

A : He might have had an accomplice...

M : He was murdered, you short presumptuous little idiot!  You know,
I'm starting to dislike you.

A [to cleaner] : All, right then, take this down : 

[M uncrosses her legs to reveal that she is wearing no underwear
(although she still has that suit on, idiot) as in 'basic instinct'.  A
cigarette that wasn't there before drops from A's mouth.  A didgeridoo
drops from C's mouth]

A : Knickers!

C drolly : I can't - she's not wearing any.

A : You have a go then.

C : Here, catch.

C throws a ball to J, who fumbles a catch with both hands.

C : I see you're left handed.

J : Errm, no actually...

C ignoring him : Or that's what you wanted us to think!  You see, the
wound inflicted on the body looks as if it were made by a right handed
person stabbing to the left, but on closer inspection, it seems that it
was made by a left handed person pretending to be a right handed
person, stabbing back to front in an underarm direction. [Pause.  The
screen has been giving a cartoon interpretation of the theory, with
multifarious knives, hands and angles adding to the confusion]

J : I'm afraid I don't...

C interrupting : Or so it would seem to the inexpert eye.  But I
maintain [speeding up] that the wound was made by a right handed
ambidexter impersonating a left hander pretending to be right handed
inflicting a wound by stabbing with the knife in the left hand to the
right on the right hand side with the left to the right and the right
to the left, right, and so this would rule you out if it were not for
the fact that you were born righthanded but were left and then became
right by righting a left slant and slanting a left right, with a
right-left-right hook to the upper chin before stabbing him in the back
to his face in the way I just described.

J : Could you repeat that?

C sighs : The wound was made by a right leftie who righted his wrongs,
and left his rights by writing a letter with his left and leaving a
writer with his right, then...

M : Wait!

C : What?

M : You're forgetting that Jay is the clumsiest person in this flat,
and that he can't even butter bread without cutting himself.  He
couldn't have killed him!

C : That's just what he wants us to think.

J : Only because it's true...

A interrupting, to D : Well, if he didn't do it, that just leaves you.
What was your motive, why did you want him dead?

D : I don't know, I've never seen him before.

A : Aha!  The perfect motive - none at all!  You see, when you live in
a small village such as I used to, you start to notice these little
things.  For example, there was the time when the vicar found a horse's
head in his bed, which made him very worried.

D : What, you mean that someone had put it there to threaten him?

A : No, he was worried because when he had left it, the rest of the
horse was still attached to its head.  Most people wanted to just blame
it on the mice, but it took me many weeks of careful investigation to
find out what had really happened to it.

D : Well?

A : It's a long story, but suffice to say, we couldn't look a jar of
mincemeat in the face for a long time afterwards.  But it's incidents
like that which give one a keen eye for the little details, and teach
one to always to always to look out for anything that seems suspicious
or unusual.

J stumbles a little : Bu.. Uh.. But why did the vicar have a horse in
his bed to start with?

A : You know, I never thought to ask.  Probably best not to pry.

M : Look, you seem to be getting nowhere. None of us knew this person,
and none of us had any reason to kill him, so why don't you both just
give up and call someone responsible?

C : OK [walks off, then pauses and turns]  Oh, just one more thing.

M : What?

C : Er... can't remember

[Turns and walks away again, then pauses and turns once more].

C : Just one more thing.

M, J and D : WHAT?

C : No, it's gone again.

[walks away]

C : No, I remember.  Something a great detective once said - 'When you
have eliminated the improbable, the impossible and the downright
stupid, whatever remains, however peculiar, must be the truth.'

M : But haven't you already eliminated everything?

C to audience : Well, what do you think?  Isn't there at least one
major character that we haven't seen yet this week?

[You enters followed by the children, who are now all dressed in the
dinner suits too, to the tune of "Little green bag"]

M, J and D : You!

Y : The same, although I despise your uncalled for exclamation.  Single
word sentences are all very well, but you cannot surpass the correct
use of subject, noun and object to clarify your meaning.

[from now on, the dialogue is dubbed on in a bad American accent]

D : You mother-baking ashtray!  I should have known that your hairy
avocado would be involved in this!

Y : Don't stew with me, ashtray.  This whole fudging mess is your
fault.

D : My fault?  My jam doughnutting fault!  There's a baking soda corpse
on my stairs and you say it's my jam doughnutting fault.

Y : Yeah, sandwich - if you weren't here I wouldn't have had to kill
him as a warning to the whole big maccing lot of you.

D drawing a gun : What did you call me?

Y : Sandwich - you're just a big juicy ham sandwich! [drawing gun] Now
what you gonna do 'bout it - is there any fat on your big ham filling,
or are you just chicken?

A drawing : You fridging shoot him, and I fridging kill you, sauce jar,
so don't pull anything fast, you ketchup.

[during this speech, everyone has now arranged themselves in a long
line, each pointing a gun at the person in front.  M is at the end.]

M : This is dumb.  Why doesn't everyone calm down before someone gets
dripping hurt?  Dave, apologise for what you said.

D : Sorry.

M : And You, apologise for calling David a sandwich.

Y : OK, I'm sorry, I'm cheesecaking sorry.  Happy?

M : Right [everyone relaxes]

Y sub votto : Dumpling.

[The scene explodes in a series of guns being fired and smoke obscures
the view.  When it settles, everyone is lying dead in a large pool of
splurge (they were using splurge guns, from Bugsy Malone).  Silence
reigns.]


Scene 4.

The critics box again - they are getting into the mood of things.

W : Woo!  What a jam doughnut ending!

TOO : Hey are you waffling with me?

W : Why should I want to waffle with you?

TOO : I just think you're waffling with me.

W affectionately : You silly old cheese toastie!

[silence]

W : Sorry.

TOO : There's one thing I don't understand.

W : What?

TOO : Who shot nice gal Marie?

[Cut across to the screen, surrounded by bodies.  It is replaying the
shoot out in slow motion.  The camera focuses on the grainy image of
Marie, shooting the child in front of her, but very clearly being
splurged from a totally different direction.  The scene runs back
quickly, as if being rewound on a video, and the action repeats.  This
time, Marie gestures off screen at someone.  Once more it goes back,
and now she holds a sign saying 'The critic did it']

TOO : The critic did it.  I wonder what that means.  Maybe it's a
commentary on the whole nature of the performance and it's subsequent
review and dissection by the true intellects, that is, ourselves.

W desperately hiding his dripping splurge gun : I have no idea.


Scene 5.

Back in the main arena.  The screen is still repeating the shoot out
original, with explosion.  A moan is heard.  Someone stirs - it is the
corpse.  He is obviously very hungover, and he holds his head.  A pile
of splurge is smeared on his stomach, and there is a small knife
sticking out of his chest.

Corpse weakly : Could you turn the noise down please?

He staggers off.

End.