The Perfect Crime

Once again I am going to tell you a story about my friend Jemima and her husband, Big Ted (they of the jumping dance in the African Serengeti story I told you some time ago).

Well this time, our intrepid travellers were traversing the Victorian Great Ocean Road in a campervan.

After a wonderful evening of wining and dining with friends, Jemima and Big Ted headed for bed. Some time later, after Jemima was fast asleep, Big Ted, feeling a little the worse for wear, decided to head for the communal toilets.

Once there, he began conducting his ablutions when suddenly he felt woosy and lightheaded and fell swiftly to the concrete floor in a faint – whacking his head on the hard floor as he went.

He was out for the count (for who knows how long?) but when he finally came around he felt decidedly better, apart from quite a nasty cut to the back of his head.

After inspecting his head in the mirror and washing off the blood, he decided he was okay to head back to the campervan. But then he noticed there was blood on the floor from his cut and so, being a thoughtful chap, he setting about mopping it up with some cleaning gear he found in a nearby cupboard.

A few minutes later, satisfied that he’d cleaned the floor to a good standard, he carefully rinsed off the mop, replaced it in the cupboard and headed back to the van. There he quietly climbed back into bed beside the still sleeping Jemima and went straight back to sleep.

In the morning, he gave Jemima a full account of the night’s unusual events which, in hindsight, he thought was rather funny.

Jemima, conversely, was horrified!

Not only that Big Ted had fainted and injured himself, but also because he hadn’t woken her to tell her what had happened. He could have died in his bed, she said, and she wouldn’t have known anything about it!

Worse still, she suddenly realised, once they did an autopsy on him they would have found he died from a blow to the head but, of course, there would be no evidence anywhere to explain what had happened (because he’d cleaned it up carefully himself, hadn’t he?)

Jemima would, no doubt, have ended up as the prime suspect in a murder trial and all because Big Ted was such a thoughtful, tidy chap!

Forensics would have been scouring every square centimetre of the van in search of the claw hammer or iron with which the heartless shrew had clomped her unsuspecting man (presumably for his money, because she had that evil look about her, didn’t she?)

Meanwhile Jemima would be sitting in some stinking police cell with tear-stained face and bulging sleepless eyes, pleading her innocence (albeit on deaf ears).

Well anyway, fortunately it all worked out well and no such police investigation was required. No thanks to Big Ted and his tidy, thoughtful ways!

(I’ve always thought tidiness was over-rated and now I know why!)