Giggleswick: The Amadán Map

Chapter Eleven: Hugh Dunnits

Chapter Eleven: Hugh Dunnits 

Within twenty-five minutes, a detective was on the scene and Trixie was sitting up and rubbing her head. “Oooh,” she moaned. “Owwwie.” 

A small crowd had formed around the dazed woman, and Mrs. Noodle made an effort to conceal Trixie’s legs with an overcoat, seeing as her skirt was rather disheveled from the fall, which had left Trixie compromising more of her virtue than usual. Mrs. Noodle dabbed at Trixie’s bloody forehead with tissues from her purse while the detective walked in circles around them, scribbling things on a notepad and taking bites out of the powdered sugar donut he was nursing in his other hand. 

“Uh huh,” the detective grunted importantly. “I see,” he said even more importantly. 

“See what?” asked Mrs. Noodle. 

“Very interesting,” he mused.

“What’s interesting?” Mrs. Noodle asked again. 

“Hmmm,” he groaned, still not having made a stitch of eye contact with Mrs. Noodle. 

“Mr. Dunnits!” Mrs. Noodle exclaimed. “I’m sitting here holding a half-conscious woman covered in blood who suddenly believes herself to be Dolly Parton. Could you please give me a hand? Has anyone called for a doctor?”   

The man known as Detective Hugh Dunnits jumped as Mrs. Noodle shouted at him, and he grabbed for his fedora as it slipped from his head. He was wearing a tan trench coat overtop a suit that appeared several sizes too large for his slim frame, and he looked to be swimming in a pair of oversized loafers. It was either that or his feet were abnormally large. 

“Well,” he began. He brushed powdered sugar from his coat. “It appears,” he continued, sounding revelatory, “that Ms. Trollop was doing a bit of Christmas shopping.” He nodded his head firmly and took another bite from his donut. 

“Yes, we’d figured that much out for ourselves, thank you,” Mrs. Noodle huffed, but Detective Dunnits wasn’t listening and was instead picking through the gift boxes lying strewn on the pavement. 

“Ah ha!” he said, powdered sugar spraying from his lips, “This is an American made wrist-watch ... very expensive!” He eyed it carefully and placed it back in its box. 

Before Mrs. Noodle could react, Trixie began to stir in her arms. She mumbled a few words and then sighed and closed her eyes again.  

“Trixie,” Mrs. Noodle urged, tapping the side of the woman’s face, “say something again.”  

Trixie’s eyes opened a crack and she whispered something, but the only word they could remotely distinguish sounded like “taken”.  

“What’s been taken?” said Mrs. Noodle and Hugh Dunnits both. 

Trixie grabbed at the scarf around Mrs. Noodle’s neck.

This time she screamed, swearing that some man was out to get her. 

“WHO?” shouted everyone standing within a ten feet radius of the bloodied woman. 

Trixie sighed dramatically. It was enough to drive her crazy, she told them. 

“What is?!” several people shouted again. 

Trixie shook her head from side to side and blinked. When she began to speak again, it was a bit tunefully, and then suddenly she broke into song. This particular song just so happened to contain every word she’d spoken in the last minute and was not about her current predicament as they’d hoped, but instead about the trials of working “nine to five”.