March 24, 2008

• It's not Sinatra, I know that much.
• Wish I could help, but in my mind I'm conflating those story details with this episode of Remington Steele, and it's confusing me.
• It does sound like The Cask of Amontillado by Poe.
• Here's the full text, but it doesn't have the line, "It was a very good year". Still, it sounds like the story you're describing.
• Or something based on it. I was thinking that too, Koks. "Amontillado", only poorly done.
• Great. Amontillado made me think of manzanilla, and now I'll be dancing that damn cachucha all day. Thanks.
• I know I read Amontillado, and I know 'Very Good Year' were two separate stories. It is entirely possible the latter was read to complement Amontillado, but I am certain of the murder by bottle, and the irony of the victim thinking the killer was speaking of the wine inside, not the fortitude of the glass itself.
• The Cask of Amontilladon’t A Mystery by The Underpants Monster Percy Drumstick, sixteenth Earl of Fatshire, was a reasonable man. Or, he liked to think of himself as such, at any rate. Everyone in the county, from the Dowager Duchess to the lowliest foetus in the womb of the lowliest employee of the Fatshire Amalgamated Pickle Works, said so as well. As well they should, reflected Percy, since he was jolly well paying them enough to say it. The only person around whom Percy could not maintain his vaunted reason was his step-daughter Thabertha. She was a crude, particularly ugly girl if he did say so himself – and he did. He often reflected that his wife’s first husband must have been some sort of Orang-Utan on weekend leave from the Royal Zoological Gardens. He nearly bit through the stem of his Meerschaum pipe whenever he heard her shrill, tuneless voice rise above the walls of the nettle garden, singing that highly inappropriate air about the plucker of pheasants and his unfortunate progeny. The only reasonable course of action His Grace could see was to get rid of the damnable filly. There was the question, of course, of how reasonable a course of action could be when planned in a state of step-daughter-induced unreason. However, he reckoned that such a reasonable man as himself was far more reasonable when being unreasonable than most men, who couldn’t manage a reasonable state of reason for their own unreasonability. The method of dispatchment was all planned out, and indeed had been since the day Thabertha – called Truggy by friends and family – had moved into Fatcribbe manor, lock, stock, and atrocious throw pillows. By a singular coincidence, Percy had recently been elected Grand Master of the Fatshire Wine Tasting and Subsequently Falling Asleep Society shortly after he learned of the deadly tannin allergy hereditary in Truggy’s family. He had been doubly surprised that his own lady wife suffered under the same malady, since her natural unsteady gait had led him to assume her perpetual intoxication. No, the problem was where to hide the ungainly, lumpen corpse when the deed was done. The local constabulary ought to put a statue of him in the village green before arresting him for such a reasonable crime, but appearances must be maintained. While following a rat into the cellars one night – he hadn’t got to be the richest man in Fatshire by letting scoundrel walk off with his hard-earned cheese – he had stumbled upon a dank, murky set of catacombs beneath the south-southwest wing of Fatcribbe Manor. He wondered, of course, what had prompted his noble ancestors to build such a structure; perhaps they had step-daughters, as well. But he did not allow such musings to slow his plans – that would have been unreasonable. The clock chimed nine. It was actually ten of the clock, but the chime had been stuck at nine for as long as Percy could remember. He removed a large picnic-basket from the hall closet and carefully laid a trail of sticky toffee puddings from the door of Truggy’s boudoir down the stairs to the catacombs. There, he took two earthenware mugs from the basket, filling them with equal parts Amontillado and beef gravy... and waited.
• Presently, the sounds of heavy footsteps and pudding-eating reached his eager ears. “Dear Truggy, Truggy dear, is that you?” he crooned. “Yes, Step-Papa,” she replied as she descended the spiral staircase, pronouncing the word ‘steppuppuh’ as usual, “I fear someone has left empty pudding dishes all up and down the stairs. Whatever can it mean?” “Never mind, my pet, my wee flapling. Come in and have a beaker of gravy with your dear Steppuppuh.” She took the proffered cup, but did not drink right away. She perched on the edge of the bottom step, her dainty slippered foot peeking out from under her long night-gown, and her undainty one doing the same. “Steppuppuh, what is this room?” she chirped. “It looks like a place where many dark deeds and foul misfortunes, and very few gay amateur theatricals, have taken place.” Percy waited for the ringing in his ears to stop, and then answered, “It is indeed. Now drink down your toddy like a good little mongoose, and I’ll tell you all about it.” She sniffed the steaming mug, and her eyes briefly uncrossed. Leaping from her seat, she flung the hot, viscous liquid into his face. “Steppuppuh! Either pixies have come in the night and replaced my nose with a sherry cork, or you propose to do me murder!” “Agh! Er...” he spluttered through the mess on his face, “I rather think the former is more likely, don’t you, Truggy dear?” Unmoved, the girl cried out again. “Egbert! Egbert! Save me! Save your poor little Truggy!” A tall, rugged, devilishly handsome man in homespun trousers and mud-crusted gum boots stepped from the shadows, with a comically large wine bottle in his raised right hand. The muscles of his powerful arm rippled, causing the Polynesian girl tattooed on his bicep to do a dance that few Society matrons would allow in their ballrooms. “Here I am, my darling!” he boomed. The last ting Percy Drumstick, sixteenth Earl of Fatshire was ever to see in his natural, quite reasonable life was the label on the heavy bottle descending toward his face. "Nineteen so and so was a horrible year for wine!" he choked out with his final breath. "It was a very good year for bottles," replied Egbert, as he clanked His grace on the head, sending him to his Maker. Surely, his Maker’s mark was upon him. “Oh, Egbert! You have saved me!” Truggy wheezed, flinging herself into his suspiciously wide-circumferenced arms. “Let us run away together! With you as my husband, I shall be content to live as the happy wife of a pheasant plucker!” He raised her chin with one finger and smiled gently. “How many times must I tell you, my sweet? I’m not the pheasant plucker; I’m the pheasant plucker’s son.” The End.
• *shouts, whistles, stamps Huzzzah, my dear! Huzzzah!!
• Dear Underpants Monster, I'm in love with your story, and am presently making love to it. If this forbidden love spawns fruit, I declare you shall be first to choose from the litter. Love, my soul.
• I don't remember the clanking-over-the-head-with-the-bottle denouement, and I don't have my copy to hand to check, but The Bibulous Business of a Matter of Taste (from the collection Lord Peter Views The Body) by Dorothy L Sayers is a short story featuring detective Lord Peter Wimsey, and certainly deals with wine-tasting and identifying different vintages...
• Not enough ghost.
• Murder? Wine? Perhaps a Roald Dahl story? What a ripping yarn, TUM!
• Not enough ghost. But plenty of spirits.
• TUM, you are a true artiste. *swirls, sniffs, slurps, burps*
• *raises a glass of Xeres in TUM's honor*
• > from the collection Lord Peter Views The Body Very strange thing - I'm certain I've read a completely different collection of Wimsey stories but with the same title...
• *Takes the time to appreciate and applaud TUM.*
• Well done, TUM, well done! *raises glass of non-alcoholic, Amontillado-like beverage*
• Shamontillado?
• There's a Vincent Price/Peter Lorre film, 'Tales of Terror' which includes a story partly based on the 'Cask', partly on 'The Black Cat', and partly Lorre/Price ad-libbing. In an early scene they taste wines in competition: Price gives elaborate, pretentious descriptions, while the drunken Lorre, though unerringly correct, merely says of each 'and it is very good'. Price screws Lorre's wife and Lorre entombs Price with the cat, though I'm not sure he hits him with a bottle and uses that line. Probably no help at all.
• Pleg, the "Morella" section of that movie has always fascinated me, although it diverges from the Poe story on some significant points. I used to watch it in the wee hours when I couldn't sleep.
• Yes, I understand Price, Lorre (and Basil Rathbone, was it?) were given a pretty free rein on that film, with generally pretty good results. Don't think it would help me sleep, though!
• Might this be relevant? (youtubez/shatner)
• Amontillado A year in the basement and you can hear the roots continue netting the four gray walls a year growing darker in knitwork The toadstools don’t gain a glow so much as the seepage in the air around them blackens the background for contrast and the wine and Time in the same relation The pipelengths forget if what face scampered through them gluts them now; the bulb imploded months ago, what are these flickering moths in the corners? Mold on the brie, the bleu, the brick. A year in the basement: a year in the hole beneath a man and woman The wind: a moan through the swiss cheese. --Albert Goldbarth