Leavitt Stafford and the Awful, Terrible, Not Very Nice Plan.

Chapter the Thirty-Fifth: A Terrible Arrest

Trigger warnings: what would today be regarded as a homophobic hate crime and dissociation

"EBERHARD!" John screamed, shaking Clarence violently and bloodying his hands in the process. "EBERHARD, COME HERE!"

As Eberhard deposited the last of the vegetables and made his way outside, Clarence's eyes had rolled to the back of his head, and blood not only gushed forth from the scotsman's neck, but also from his lips as though he had engaged in a most incompetent spot of red wine sampling. What felt like an eternity before, he had clutched at the hand of John and cast panicked eyes upon him, but now his grip had slackened, most certainly beyond the point of no return.

Eberhard's countenance twitched as he witnessed the sheer volume of gore. "Who the bloody hell did this?" he demanded in gruff tones.

"I DO NOT KNOW! GO TO THE POLICE STATION! TELL THEM TO INVESTIGATE!"

Eberhard obeyed this command, and he rushed out of the slums and onto the road. The sheer intensity of the frenzied behaviour of John had given him ample reason to believe that he and Clarence had been lovers. After all, mere friends would not produce such profound emotion after they had known one another for perhaps a month.

The memory of the gore he had recently encountered haunted him. Mere minutes before, Clarence had been filled with zest and mischief. Now the man rested upon the filth of the slums in a puddle of his own blood, his homosexual lover crazed by panic. Could it be that John himself had killed the man? Perhaps, given the desire for John to behave according to his moral compass, he had taken Clarence's homosexuality into his own hands... but how could it be that one as harmless as John might have done something as shocking as this? Could it be that his altruism was a façade in order to disguise a more sinister nature? Could it be that this nature was the true reason his brother despised him so? No, it seemed absurd...

Eberhard ran towards the district in which the police station resided, neither wishing for the murderer to be loose nor to allow the vegetables to spoil. Though he, due to his immense bulk, was not a particularly fast runner, he was adept at remember the many thoroughfares of the town, and so he quickly made up for his suboptimal speed of running. Within minutes, he stood before the police station with his hands upon his knees, gasping for breath, for he had not ceased his running for so much as one moment.

"This had best not be about the flying ladies near the forest," warned the incompetent policeman once Eberhard had entered the police station.

"Excuse me?"

"The flying ladies. Have you not heard? Word has spread throughout the town like wildfire, so how could you have possibly missed it?"

"I am a busy man," Eberhard informed the policeman impassively.

The policeman, having been silenced in such an abrupt manner, floundered for words, but found none in relation to the flying ladies. Instead, he resorted to demanding to learn of the true reason for the arrival of this burly, stolid man, as he should have been doing from the beginning: "What brings you here?"

"There has been a murder mere minutes ago."

The blood forming an ocean above the filth of the ground. The eyes rolling towards the back of Clarence's head. The energy draining from him.

"And where was this murder, may I ask?" The policeman was relieved that there was at last a crime that was not a ludicrous nonexistent tale procured by a madman. He was particularly glad that it was not a ludicrous nonexistent tale procured by the short, bespectacled madman who seemed incapable of caring for children, for one more foolish report and the policeman would likely arrest him!