The Jester

By R.E. Bowden and L. K. Bowden

The Jester is an alien lifeform who travels the universe. In this story he has come to visit the Earth, which he last visited a thousand years ago, when he spent his time in Ireland, where the locals worshipped him as a god and called him a Leprechaun.

He is called The Jester advisedly, because he is a jolly but mischievous character who likes to play tricks on people. He is not evil, he just likes having fun. Sometimes he makes dreams come true.

In this story he plays two japes. In the first one he takes a leaf out of an Agatha Christie story by placing dead bodies, of naked women, in the libraries of six of the landed gentry in this country, just in order to baffle the police and have fun with them. In his second jape he has further fun by involving himself with the robbery of an ancient religious object – the alleged skull of a saint!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jun 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9781035865109

R.E. Bowden

R.E. Bowden was a senior lecturer in Visual Communications at Wolverhampton University. He is now retired and spends time writing books. In his leisure time he and his wife were fond of boating and owned a canal boat. They were members of one of the largest boat clubs in the country and travelled over the 2,000 miles of interlinked canals and rivers in this country. Apart from writing novels, Bowden was a musician and wrote and directed many musical shows. His other big interest was model railways and had three tracks in his large garden at home.

Book preview

The Jester

R.E. Bowden

Austin Macauley Publishers

The Jester

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Preamble

Part One: The Bodies in the Libraries

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Part Two: The Skull

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

About the Author

R.E. Bowden was a senior lecturer in Visual Communications at Wolverhampton University. He is now retired and spends time writing books. In his leisure time he and his wife were fond of boating and owned a canal boat. They were members of one of the largest boat clubs in the country and travelled over the 2,000 miles of interlinked canals and rivers in this country.

Apart from writing novels, Bowden was a musician and wrote and directed many musical shows. His other big interest was model railways and had three tracks in his large garden at home.

Dedication

To my nephew, Kevin Bowden, a fellow writer and enthusiast.

Copyright Information ©

R.E. Bowden 2024

The right of R.E. Bowden to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with Sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035865093 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035865109 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Preamble

The Jester is on a visit to your planet, I’m glad to say, as I really like your planet. It is one of my favourites.

He has travelled several trillion of your earth miles, instantly, because that is what he can do. It’s easy when you know how. Those rockets of yours are a laugh, really. No chance!

On his last planet, Zog, he did not have a particularly good time. It had all gone pear-shaped, and he had been thrown out. This has happened quite a lot, on many other planets, over the millennia, so watch out!

My job, as his Watcher, while he’s here on Earth, or wherever, is to monitor him and report on what he does to the local Committee of Cosmic Forces. On this planet, the local creatures are ruled over by Gaia herself, Mother Earth. Nice lady.

We have nothing to do with your Religions as you know them. They have their place, and they can give much comfort. No, this is Science. You probably won’t believe me, but our committee designed, as requested, all your Earth creatures, great and small, including you humans and other primates. We like doing that sort of thing. Evolution? Don’t make me laugh! It’s just us!

We are rather proud of butterflies, actually. Won a Cosmic prize! Not so proud of humans, or warthogs, sorry about that! Of course, you humans have been put on most planets, some are better than others. As primates, we didn’t give you much in the way of powers, apart from bigger brains. It’s amazing what you Earthlings have achieved, considering… But I digress.

Now, he is called The Jester for a good reason. He is not evil, just mischievous. He likes to have a laugh and play tricks. A pain in the neck, really, but he can be amusing at times, and sometimes he does good deeds for people he likes or feels sorry for. If he goes over the top my orders are to throw him out; but I also report on his progress and in this book is my report, in places.

Just for information, he’s been here before, about a thousand of your earth years or so ago, in Ireland, where the local population called him a Leprechaun. You know, pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, type of thing. Crazy!

He stayed for a few of your years and played his tricks, and my committee and Mother Earth tolerated him for a while. He is good-natured really and, on the whole, he left behind a lasting impression and became something of a local celebrity. He sometimes makes dreams come true, so his heart is in the right place. I could tell you some tales! Make you laugh, make you weep. Another time.

So now he is in England and up to his tricks again. He likes reading detective fiction and loves Agatha Christie, who is famous on many planets, actually. He hit on an idea for a bit of trickery when he read her book called, The Body in the Library. He thought, what if there were lots of bodies in lots of libraries, all exactly alike, that would cause some problems for the detectives!

Oh, while he was over here, as a human being, he decided to call himself Almouth Shillingbottle, or just Al for short. Because it amused him. He is amazingly egotistical, but in fact, he is always getting things wrong—not that he ever admits it. As said, A Pain in the Neck! You may get to meet him actually. He sometimes wipes your memory of him after the encounter, so you might not know.

The trouble is he is so difficult to describe. Call him a Q, an Entity, a Shapeshifter, an Immortal, or an Annoying Stupid Prat—all of those fit to some extent—his powers really are enormous by any standard. He can do more or less anything he wants to do, instantly, no problem. Omnipotent, you could say, as long as Mother Earth tolerates him, that is. Or my committee, come to that. Cosmic Forces Rule, as said.

At the moment, our Cosmic Forces Committee for this planet sits in Cornwall in the UK. We probably appear to be a weird bunch of folk—but in Cornwall, that is not so unusual, of course! Some are a lot weirder than us. Nobody bothers us. We like it there, I must say—we might stay.

Love the pasties. Best in the universe!

The Watcher

Part One

The Bodies in the Libraries

Prologue

James, 10th duke of Sandwall, was just about ready for his bed. An elderly man of some seventy-nine long years, he liked to go to bed quite early of late, after a tot or two of a favourite sundowner, in front of his discreet television set, housed in an antique cabinet.

A tall, thin, cadaverous man, with whisps of wild white hair seemingly randomly arranged on his long, semi-bald pate, he sat in a shabby but comfortable soft green leather high-backed chair, with a small table by his side, on which was set an antique crystal decanter half-full of a delightful fine old French brandy, brought to him by an elderly and valued family retainer, Soames.

Duke James had a fabulous cellar of such excellent treasures, wines and spirits, literally hundreds of them in all. Life would have been good but for the sad state of mind of his dear wife, the duchess Dottie and her advanced dementia. She was in the same room, staring into space, quietly sitting in her blue silk dressing gown on a small tub chair, her feet placed neatly side by side on a little upholstered green stool.

Dottie no longer had the power of rational speech. For her age, 70, she was rather beautiful; trim figure, with big sad faded watery blue eyes and soft silvery hair tied back with a black velvet ribbon. Everyone loved Dottie, but she seemed to be slowly fading away…

The duke had been watching Newsnight, on BBC1, which he always found quite interesting, although, to be honest, he had snoozed through most of it. This had been a perfectly ordinary, rather sad evening then, in the old castle, which had known such happy times, long ago in the past lives of the duke and his darling wife, once the vivacious and beautiful hostess of so many dazzling parties.

But the night was soon about to change and not for the better. Worse, much worse.

There was a knock at the sitting room door, which opened revealing the imperturbable Soames who entered silently and coughed discreetly. Soames was short, bald and fat.

‘Eh, what?’ demanded the duke, rubbing his bleary eyes.

‘Sorry to disturb you, Your Grace, but there appears to be a dead body in the library.’

‘A what?’ roared His Grace, struggling to rise out of his chair.

‘A body sir. Dead. Naked, in the library. A young, blonde lady. She looks rather like that old film star, Marilyn Monroe, Your Grace.’

‘Have you taken leave of your senses, man?’

‘I believe not, Your Grace.’

Chapter One

It was 10:00 am, Monday, at my agency, B&I (Private Investigators) Ltd. B&I stood for Ben McGuire, that’s my business name, and Ian Jones, my partner. There was another partner in the firm, the gorgeous Pat Lenton. I was the boss, so it didn’t matter if I was a bit late. Bosses’ hours. I had been over in Ireland at the weekend, with my long-time girlfriend, the fragrant Sue, one of the five daughters of the world-famous Rock Legend, Tony McGuire, no less.

I spent most weekends with Sue, but weekdays were split between the agency, where I was known as plain Mr Ben McGuire, and my other life as Lord Benjamin Hawke, 10th Earl of Sumerton, in charge of an enormous estate in Lancashire, plus companies galore, a few villages in the county, and vast estates and plantations in many other countries.

As chair of the Main Board, I was always available by one means or another, and basically, all I had to do was to sign things when necessary and meet and greet various people from all over. Mostly enjoyable enough. But I liked both of my lives and being a PI had always been one of my dreams. Not that it was always exciting or rewarding. Many cases were fairly boring, to be fair.

We were just having a cup or two of coffee. We were not expecting to see any clients that morning, but when the phone rang. Pat answered it. She insists on answering the phone and doing her other tasks as a receptionist, even though I have made her a partner, a fully-fledged PI, together with Ian who helped me set up the agency in the first place. She really is a treasure.

We couldn’t survive without her. I know that she and Ian have a bit of an understanding, and I fully expect them to marry one day in the future. They, unlike me, are what you might call the marrying kind of people. Frightens me to death, the idea of tying myself down… Not my scene.

Pat said, in her low, sexy voice, ‘B&I, private investigators, can I help you?’

A very upper-class voice said, ‘Ah, mm, yes, my dear. I believe you have a chap called Ben Hawke on your staff. Lord Hawke that is, y’know. I’ve heard on the grapevine he’s opened a sort of detective agency, and I could do with having a quick word with him, please. Tell him it’s Duke James, would you? He knows me, and I was an old friend of his poor father the Earl for many years, y’know.’

Pat, as usual, had the phone on speaker mode, so I heard what was said. Pat winked at me, she knew of my alter ego of course. At work, as said, I am known usually as plain Mr Ben McGuire, using the surname of my long-time girlfriend, Sue.

Pat said, ‘Just one moment, please. I’ll connect you.’

I picked up my phone. ‘Hello, James,’ I said, ‘Ben here. Lovely to hear from you after all this time. How can I help?’

‘Lovely to hear you, Ben. I’ve met you with your dear father at the races, and at weekend do’s here and there, many times. I’ve seen you grow up from a small boy, y’know, old chap. I hear you’ve had to retire from the Navy and have become a sort of detective, so I wondered if you could help me, as I’ve got myself a bit of a problem, and I really don’t know what to do, old chap.’ He sounded really anxious.

I knew the old duke pretty well and had visited him several times growing up, or when on leave from the service. I had loved going to weekend shooting parties and such at the fine old castle where he and his wife, Dotty, lived. A lovely man, a splendid old gentleman of a kind rapidly dying out, I’m sorry to say. I replied that of course I would help—and would make arrangements to come and visit him and find out what the problem was. I asked if I could bring my staff with me as they would love to visit him at his castle, I was sure.

‘Absolutely, old boy, come to lunch and split a bottle or two with me. To tell you the truth, old chap, I’m really at my wits’ end. Come soon.’

I made arrangements to go and see him the very next day, at 12:00 noon or thereabouts. It was only about half an hour’s journey to the castle, which sits on the Lancashire coast, to the north of Morecambe Bay. The original castle had been built in the sixteenth century and had never seen any battles or suchlike. It had been built simply as a home and county seat for the first duke to gain that title from the then King for services rendered in one of the foreign land-grabbing expeditions of the time, at least that’s what I believed.

I knew about the condition the duchess was suffering from but had not seen Dorothy, or Dottie as she was known to her friends, for some years. I remembered her as a delightful lady, full of fun, who lived what used to be called the Gay Life in the old days, when gay just meant happy. So sad she was suffering from dementia of late.

We all looked forward to going to visit the old duke, especially Pat and Ian, for whom this would be a unique experience, of course, as a guest, not just as a tourist. Whereas I, from the landowner class, was quite used to being an invited guest of the great houses of