Lord Der Ärzte - Gentleman Detective Chapter 1
Lord Der Arzte gives Sherlock Holmes a run for his money... well, maybe a gentle walk! Funny, Original and Quirky!
Lord Harold Der- Ärzte – Gentleman Detective
Chapter 1 – The package.
“Harold, a dirty little oik is ringing our front doorbell. Kindly set the dogs onto ‘em!”
Lady Der- Ärzte’s upper-class accent rang out around the afternoon lounging room, as unappealing in its tone as a Saint Bernard’s fart is in its bouquet.
“We don’t have any dogs, Mother.” His Lordship’s monotone response barely made it over the top of his newspaper. “Banks will deal with them.”
The afternoon edition of ‘The Epochs Gazette’ was then ruffled to straighten its pages and to indicate his Lordship’s level of annoyance.
Whilst daggering her son’s newspaper with a piercing blue eye, her Ladyship’s frustration painted itself clearly on her narrow face. She grabbed the brass speaking tube near the bell pull, which connected, conveniently or inconveniently, depending on who was listening, the lounging room to the kitchen.
“Banks. BANKS!” was thundered down the tube’s mouthpiece in quite an unladylike manner, but non the less, very ladylike because Lady Der- Ärzte’s was, in fact, a proper lady!
“Banks. There’s an oik at my front door. It’s dirty, big, thick, and holding a very threatening stick that’s making a dreadful noise and spraying repulsive dark clouds of yuckiness into my air. And…”
Lady Der- Ärzte swished the lace curtain back so that with pursed lips and glaring eyes, she could look down on the working class.
“It has a rather grubby lower-class parcel tied to its stick, which is being waved about as the oik smiles and waves at me!”
The lace curtain was swished right back into place.
“BANKS, get father’s Blunderbuss right now and blow the oik away! …BANKS!”
“Oh, Mother, really!” bellowed Lord Der- Ärzte as he threw his paper to the floor. His green silken smoking jacket irritably adjusted with finely manicured hands. “I will not have the neighbours talk. Tell Banks to tell the delivery man to go to the back door; I shall address them there.”
****
Lord Harold Der- Ärzte was a modern aristocrat interested in many things, biology, herbology, anthropology, psychology and science, to name but a few. But his Lordship had only one activity that genuinely absorbed most of his time, thought and inheritance.
He wanted to be a detective!
A gentleman detective non the less.
Consequently, this interest cost his inherited fortune quite a pretty penny. Not that that concerned his Lordship. Money was something that simply happened. It had always been there and would continue to be there.
Money just seemed always to be hanging about.
And as Sir Harold’s Mother continually stated, the money needed to be spent to ensure it didn’t clog up the system. What system Harold wasn’t sure of, but he didn’t want to clog it because one didn’t like getting one’s hands dirty.
Firstly, Lord Der- Ärzte had filled his library with very dull, dusty and dreary books. All of which looked the part, but every time he opened one, his brain rebelled and refused to be complicit in absorbing their hidden knowledge.
Lord Der- Ärzte comforted himself by intellectualising that if he hung out in the Library for at least an hour a day, at some stage, osmosis by association would occur. He was, in fact, considering hiring a little troupe of people to do the reading and then act out the book’s contents to him, as he always found learning to be so much easier when he watched people instead of being forced to read about them.
Sadly, so far, the only books which had independently… raised his interest were a set of anthropological investigations into the rare Hot Lands tribes. Their glossy black and white photos of young women dancing in their traditional dress were closely studied over several quiet nights with his largest magnifying glass at hand.
Then there was the acquirement of all the latest scientific gadgets that tended to fall apart because the instruction manuals needed to be easier to follow. Lord Der- Ärzte sometimes cursed himself for buying the cheap versions as this, too, played a part in his growing collection of useless scientific bric-a-brac. In his Lordship’s attempt to build the devices or hammer the little fiddly bits into place, parts went missing or were broken.
After one particularly nasty experience with a flying compass, which by the way, was still buried in the depths of his father’s old monstrosity of a globe, all the gadgets were packed into boxes and placed up in the stable’s attic for safekeeping.
His Lordship had quickly decided not to dabble in the world of chemical sciences when he’d accidentally set fire to one of his beakers. It had resulted in singed curtains and a terrible hallucination episode involving big fat hairy spiders, lipstick and a fine for public nudity.
And frankly, unlike other ‘Gentlemen Detectives’ who turned their spare time to learning the violin, it just wasn’t his thing, but the drums were turning out to be somewhat less annoying! And even though his mother had relegated his musical passion down to the gardener’s glass house, located in the furthest corner of the garden, it didn’t matter. Whenever he felt frustrated or stumped during one of his investigations, he’d go down and bang away until he felt better. Or the local mob of stray cats became too loud to ignore.
Nonetheless, Sir Harold would not be deterred.
A detective he would be!
A World Class Detective, non the less.
****
The kitchen’s back door was wrenched open; his Lordship, who lived a refined life, found it quite confronting to be greeted by the latest revolution in modern history and was not impressed.
“Yes!” was coldly spat out.
“Beggin ya pardon ya honour, but you’ve got a drone delivery.”
The dangling machine moved a little to the right allowing his Lordship to view a little man wearing a brown postal overcoat and a black peaked hat with the postal services logo of two pelicans fighting with boxing gloves embroidered on it. He stood on the paving at the bottom of the back doorstep, holding a long pole with a slightly limp brass-winged drone attached. The metallic and wooded machine had just enough remaining fuel to create little puffs of black smoke and whirr one of its wooden wings up and down at a furious pace for a second or two.
His Lordship sighed. “Oh, how droll a Congo package.”
The ‘Congo Basin’, a backwater company named after a rainforest, had come up with this brilliant little device. Under the right weather conditions, drones could deliver a small package for a small price over a small distance. His Lordship also found it very droll that the company had named itself after a location occupied by lots of life-giving trees but was doing its darndest to use as many paper products as possible.
Its latest invention, they stated, would revolutionise the postal service making it a modern and efficient delivery system on a global scale.
Unfortunately, the technology was still in its infancy and under development. So, to ensure the modern system worked, more people were employed to find the delivery drones after they were blown off course, ran out of fuel, or were attacked by seagulls, pigeons or robins.
In fact, the retrieval teams far outnumbered the people who had initially been employed to remotely fly the drones in the first place. They also outnumbered the staff who used to deliver packages by hand but were fired because that delivery method was so old, outdated, and inefficient.
“I think your mechanical dragonfly has seen better days!” His Lordship eyed the untrustworthy device. “Why do you have it attached to a pole?”
“Well, the drone, it’s a flying machine, init!” The postal delivery man beamed, “An’ the sender they paid for a fly’n delivery. So, we provides,” his smile became nervous and somewhat wider, “a fly’n delivery.”
“But it’s not flying. It’s broken, and you’ve tied one of its wings to your pole, so actually, it’s a pole delivery!” Lord Der- Ärzte raised a dark eyebrow over his blue eye.
“You’se gets what you’se pays for wiv’ the modern postal service.” The postal worker grinned apprehensively whilst swapping the stick holding up the buzzing drone to lean on his other hip.
“Really? Do we, though? Tell me, my good man, why do you call the metal dragonfly a drone?” His lordship looked down his strong nose at the swinging wooden and brass device.
“’Cos everyone drones on about the buzzing noise they make!”
The worker was now getting techy. He had other drones to deliver and one particularly annoying retrieval from the top of a new church’s copper-covered steeple down in Beggars Lane. He couldn’t be standing around having a chat with every toff he met in a day. “Ya needs to take ya package, ya honour.”
Signing the little piece of cardboard the postal worker held out to him, his Lordship then tugged at the little brass clips under the drone, releasing the brown paper and string package into his possession.
“Well, I certainly didn’t order anything, and it definitely has not been purchased by me. Banks ensures all my purchases are carried out up close and personal. Good day.”
The dark wooden door was unceremoniously slammed shut.
“Thank you for supporting your local post office!” Was called out loudly from behind the ironbark wood, followed softly by, “Ya rich pillock!”
The package was flipped from one hand to another, surprising his Lordship with its bulky, lightweight.
The name ‘Morri Tarty’ was written on the sender’s address label in a fine copper plate script.
Upon opening the package, Sir Harold’s level of interest blossomed. “Oh, now that is interesting…”
Thank you for reading my madness.
If you’d like to keep reading the following Chapters, Click here!
His Lordship is a charming character! Thank you, V!🩶
I love the language, I love the quirky characters and the sarcasm is wonderful. I should like to read more. Thank you so much for a much needed good laugh. 😂😊