Inspector Bentwhistle's Last Tango

The Silver Shores Estates, Coronado, California, June 1937.

Ex Inspector of Police Theophilus Bentwhistle, seduced by the benevolent sun, the faint chop of an amiable sea, the balmy air that London could never know, suddenly and for the first time ever, felt of himself as an 'Ex'. It was a very happy if unsettling feeling.

Slumping down in the deck chair like a huge, boneless, old bear he felt neurones desynapt that had not let down before in the past fifty years.

"Ha harumph." He muttered.

An intellectual, under the shaggy exterior, with a penchant for linguistics and a truly unlimited vocabulary, 'Ha harumph' was his most frequent utterance. And that and an occasional reluctant, 'Yes', or 'No', might be all that passed his vocal chords from one week to the next.

In this new mood, however, his mind introspected, a rare thing for him. This new feeling then, he thought, "Ha harumph," was something from deep inside. Of course outside nothing was changed. In fact if he were to be set down in any street corner in London or any hamlet in the United Kingdom it would be but a moment before the he was recognized. The massive frame, noble head, face of a whipped mastiff, with furrowed forehead, outsize ears, hooded lids over sleepy, grey eyes and the row on row of dependant jowls, so well characterized in the Times, marked him. So that where ever he went it was but a moment before he was aware of the whispers about him. "It's Bentwhistle. You know, the Tupenny Sherlock Holmes."

He stopped to search for his Meerschaum. He never smoked it; he just liked to polish it. And that was not often as it was unfailingly in his Burberry pocket downstairs when he was at home or on his pipe stand at the office when he was out. Consequently he spent a good deal of time searching for it. As a result the numerous cartoons of him in the London Times usually depicted him as having just tracked down some heinous murderer but still sleuthing about for his pipe.

Well, that couldn't be helped. He "be what he be", as his Yorkshire forbearers would say, and he wouldn't, couldn't change any of it, not even his workaday uniform.

In all weathers he wore a worn, shapeless suit of heavy, woolen-tweed, a white shirt with stiff, turn-down, wing tip collar, a black string tie, and ankle-high shoes, like great, black coal shuttles, and with laces up the side.

For wet weather, and he was a weather misanthrope as he expected wet weather at all times, there was the black derby, set four square on his head, the large, shiny, black-rubber overshoes and the steel-ferruled, black umbrella that was both cane, swagger stick and the only weapon that he ever carried.

But still, "Ha harumph", about this new feeling.

His butler cum research assistant in the more esoteric crimes interrupted him. "Begging your pardon, Milord."

"Digby, no matter what the Proclamation from the King proclaims, I am not and will never be a Milord."

"Ah. Beg pardon, Sir."

"Nor a 'Sir'."

"Master Theophilus..." Digby was referring to their common upbringing in a small village in the south of Yorkshire.