The Delivery

Home shopping, customer credit and home delivery have been with us for many years now. Harrods of London and J C Penney have both had such a facility for many years.

Early one morning, there is a ring at the doorbell (or possibly thetradesman’s entrance). Once answered it proves to be James Sheridan, the regular delivery driver for Harrods. He has a large wicker basket full of goodies as ordered earlier that week. However, the wrong items seem to have been delivered.

Possibilities

1 The basket contains the expected groceries and a severed human finger (lleft-handring finger, female, with engagement ring included). It is neatly wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, in a manner similar to a small parcel of butcher meat. It has only recently been separated from its owner, not with surgical precision but with skill nonetheless.

There is a letter inside a sealed envelope. Composed of letters cut from the Times, it says Bring the 1000 to the train station in time for the 19.45 express train to Dover.

The hallmark and inscription inside the ring allow it to be traced via Herzberg Jewellers to its purchaser Basil Milton, a minor aristocrat living in Belgravia. Basils intended, Miss Mary Sheldon, was kidnapped two days ago during a walk on Hampstead Heath.

The identity of the kidappers is a mystery. They have an unwitting accomplice who works for Harrods and it is he who accidentally put the kidnappers’ demand in the wrong basket. If apprehende,d he did not even know the contents of the parcel or about the kidnapping, he was simply bribed to add a package to a delivery.

2 The wrong basket has been delivered. It contains a picnic meal for two (including a fine bottle of claret) and the first sealed clue for a forthcoming weekend treasure hunt. The intended recipient is Clytemnestra Poppelwell, a scatty heiress-to-be. If the baskets are swapped back, Clytemnestra will be keen to have her rescuers join the treasure hunt with her.

The treasure hunt has been arranged by Bertrand Fortescue, a simply charming London socialite. He is the bastard son of Arglye Poppelwell, Clytemnestra's father. He plans to bump off Clytemnestra during the treasure hunt, faking an accident. Then, when old man Poppelwell finally dies of terminal gout, he will inherit the family estates and fortune. He sees little trouble in doing so as all of Clytemnestras friends are airheads just like she is.

3 The basket contains a polished mahogany presentation box 4 x 4 x 4. The inside is green velvet lined and contains an odd grey/blue spherical rock formation just slightly larger than a billiards ball. A handwritten card describes it as An unusually hard opaque silicate formation, highly decorative and resistant to accidental damage. The ideal paperweight.

The rock is a Cthonian egg, discovered by Ms. Erma Smits, a moderately well-known sculptor. She has been supplying small original sculptures to the more exclusive stores for sale as gifts and curios. Erma lives in Yorkshire, where she finds natural rock formations to be the ideal starting point for her pieces. She unwittingly found the egg in the effluvium of a flash flood which caused her local river to burst its banks. Some distance upriver from her home is a tributary fed by The Spout, a fast-flowing stream that emerges from the base of a large cliff face.

Someone has chosen the paperweight as a birthday gift for the scholarly recluse in their life. It now represents a good financial investment as the morning papers all contain the tragic news that Ms. Erma Smitts, a respected sculptor, was killed just

yesterday when her ramshackle cottage collapsed during a minor earthquake. Other articles tell of small aftershocks which have been occurring in the last 24 hours.

© Peter Devlin