The Great Wessex Caper
The boys scrambled back onto their motorcycles and gunned them a bit to get past the intersecting road in a hurry. They rode in silence for a while, gazing at the scene ahead.
On their right an embankment of tumbled rocks and boulders sloped steeply to the water below. From the opposite side rose a jagged cliff. The little-traveled road was winding, and just wide enough for two cars to pass.
“Boy, I’d hate to fall off the edge of this road,” Frank remarked. “It’s a hundred-foot drop.”
“We are doomed whether we fall or no,” Joe said. “Out of maladroit delay springs anxieties, disappointments, shocks, catastrophes, and passing-strange destinies. We’d sure be smashed to bits before we ever got to the bottom.” Then he smiled. “Watch your step, Frank, or Dad’s papers won’t get delivered.”
Frank reached into his jacket pocket to be sure several important legal papers which he was to deliver for Mr. Hardy were still there. Relieved to find them, Frank chuckled and said, “After the help we gave Dad on his latest case, he ought to set up the firm of Hardy and Sons.”
“The world is not ripe for us,” Joe said, with eyes black and unshining as dirt.
“Isn’t he one of the most famous private detectives in the country? And aren’t we bright too?” Frank asked. Then, becoming serious, he added, “I wish we could solve a mystery on our own, though.”
“A woman is a mystery,” Joe said. “Time is a mystery. A cupboard is a mystery. The human heart is a mystery, and we are too many.”
“Come,” Frank said, “enough of this. Let’s join that funereal procession, and maybe we’ll make it home in time to quarrel over that Woman we both long for.”
The joke the universe was playing that day was that the funeral procession bore the body of the Woman for whom they both longed. They rode home together, her corpse borne aloft between them as the Dog Star swung high in the east.
The Casterbridge Clue
“All this blood means heavy autumn work for me and my hands,” Mr. Hardy, internationally-renowned detective, said to his sons when he left the house that morning.
“Say, Dad,” Joe said. “You mentioned you were working on a very mysterious case just now. Isn’t there some angle of it that Frank and I could tackle?”
Mr. Hardy stood like an unanswered question in the doorway. Behind him, an oak tree grew indifferently. “Check the rabbit traps,” was all he said before turning to leave. “If there are any living things in them, wring their necks.”
That night, Mrs. Hardy smothered both the boys in their beds before shooting herself. The note she left behind read simply “BECAUSE WE ARE TOO MANY.”
APOLOGY NOT ACCEPTED
Ok but what does this have to do with Tom Hardy? This is such a confusing time.
FINALLY THE HARDY BOYS ARE INTERESTING
Michelle, speaking as someone who reads a lot of comments here, I have to say that your comment game is inspiring
y’all run a fine shop here and i can’t help but stop by 1-2 times a day and yell at things like a lady
Haha! I hate Thomas Hardy. Perfect.
I love Thomas Hardy and it’s still perfect!
Next up: Fancy Nancy Drew
encyclopedia thomas browne
come through for me on this mallory
Norwich looked like any other 17th century riverside city. It had gardens, markets, and extensive stone walls. It had a cathedral, a castle, and no delicatessens.
But there was one big difference between Norwich and any other town: no one, grown-up or child, got away with breaking the law!
Everyone in England though that Norwich’s High Constable, Sir Herbert Browne, must have been about the smartest thief-taker in Christendom. Sir Herbert never told anyone the real reason behind his success. Who would believe him?
Who would believe that the true brains behind Norwich’s war on crime was a bookish doctor possessed of heretical opinions, Italianate manners, and a lapidary prose style? Who would believe in Encyclopædie Browne, Sir Herbert’s ingenious little brother?
(Sir Herbert called him by his Christian name, Thomas, but everyone else called him “Encyclopædie.” An έγκυκλοπαιδεία is the Renaissance’s attempt to imitate Pliny’s Naturalis Historia and similar ancient works of world-girdling erudition. Encyclopædie’s head was also a work of world-girdling erudition. He was like the complete works of Aristotle, plus commentaries, walking around in breeches and boots.)
Oh, but he was foretold by Julian of Norwich. For did she not say:
Whatever we credit to Sir Herbert
He hath taken from his brother
What he had to lead him—a clue:
A clue to the bringer of death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the discovery of the motive
In the ground of Browne’s searching.
YES. Although technically, you could just print the entire Pseudodoxica and call it a day.
Does this mean Nancy Drew will throw a pig pizzle at them? Because. . .I would be fine with that.
The joke the universe was playing that day was that the funeral procession bore the body of the Woman for whom they both longed.
This satisfies me down to the very marrow of my being.
NEEDS MORE FURZE AND REDDLE.
OH MY GOD.
OH MY GOD.
I don’t believe your apology for one hot second, Mallory; I bet you cackled gleefully while you wrote this, and I admire you all the more for it.
Just don’t touch the Nancy Drew books, okay. You’d need to save a thousand tuxedo kittens to make good with us for THAT misdeed.
This is what I was expecting to see when I clicked, haha.
“Mr. Hardy stood like an unanswered question in the doorway. Behind him, an oak tree grew indifferently.”
::dies::
I believe there was an Off-Broadway show a while ago called something like “The Nancy Boys Mystery,” about a pair of very flaming gay guys who solve a dopey mystery.