Writer's Notebook

This week's Fiction Friday revisits and a nursery rhyme. I wonder if you've ever wondered what really lies behind the accident Jack and Jill suffered that day they went to fetch some water. Well, for the first time ever, all is revealed. And more frightening, funny and devastating truths are revealed here - fictional one and all.

_______________________________________

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pale of water.

Nobody had the slightest suspicion of foul play; not until decades later that renowned and most intrepid of crime fighters, Dr. Holmes Watsonian came by chance upon the scene during his honeymoon. Against the local police inspector's better judgement and the silent pleas of his wife, Dr. Watsonian decided, after making an initial examination of the crime scene, that the case must be reopened. He had been forced to admit that the scene would have considerably altered over the thirty years since the accident, if accident it was. But he never let facts like that worry him. Logic, cold calculating logic was all that counted in a case like this.

Indeed, to Dr. Watsonian it seemed far more likely that somebody had tried to do away with Mr. Jack Anonymous. The motive was not difficult to ascertain. Any suriving relative would profit enormously from the vast fortune which the song written in his honour would raise for his estate. It was for no lesser reason than this, that his one and only suspect was Mrs. Jill Anonymous. The fact that Jill herself had been badly injured in the accident counted for nothing. Dr. Watsonian knew full well that injuries could be faked, and any amount of pain would be more than compensated for, if the reward was sufficiently large. So Dr. Watsonian went down on his hands and knees in order to make a meticulous inspection of both the hill and the pathway on which Jack's crown met his match. Watching from afar, Watsonian's wife gave a wry smile as he uncovered piece after piece of incriminating evidence, each time refuted by members of the local police force, bumblers one and all. That Watsonian's powers could still be so acute more than thirty years after the crime was committed, both amazed and worried her. Who knows what he would yet uncover! She sauntered slowly down the hill towards the spot where her husband lay prostrate on the ground, but as she approached him she tripped and fell, sending the tip of her umbrella plunging into the back of his neck. Dr. Watsonian had indeed made just two mistakes. He had failed to realise that Anonymous was not really the culprit's surname, and he had forgotten his wife's Christian name.