utterpants
Funny Sherlock Holmes Lord of the Rings parody

The Case of the Shire Ringwraith
A Chilling tale of sex, drugs, violence and unholy desires in the Shire.

By Mercedes Dannenberg

Holmes put down his syringe with a sigh of ennui and tossed me the note the postman had just delivered.
"What do you make of it, Bingo?"

I read as follows:

RE: Ringwraiths Monendei, 27th Blotmath S.R. 1762

Sir,
Our esteemed client, Mr Boffin of Duckmill Lane, Buckleberry, has sent us the attached communication of yesterday's date concerning Ringwraiths. As our firm specialises in the supply of organic mushroom compost to the trade the matter is rather out of our purview. We have therefore taken the liberty of recommending that Mr Boffin call upon your professional services. We do so because of your gratifyingly successful resolution of the case of Phillida Blackfoot.

We remain, Sir,

faithfully yours,
Tunnelly, Grabbit and Bungler, Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths.

"Phillida Blackfoot was not the name of a young woman, Bingo," said Holmes. "It was a particularly virulent foot fungus which baffled the finest minds in Chiropody until I connected it to the 'The Case of the Giant Troll of Brentwood' — a story for which the world is not yet prepared. But what do we know about 'Ringwraiths?' Do they come within our purview? Anything is better than boredom now that the cocaine has run out. But we appear to have stumbled upon some silly fairy tale. Get out the casebook and look under 'R'— there's a good chap."

I leaned across to the bookcase, and taking down the heavy volume, handed it to the Great Detective.

"Robbery at Bag-End," he read. "That was a bad business. I have some recollection that you apprehended the wrong suspect, Bingo, though you took great pains to deny it in your notes. 'The Revenge of the Reclusive Professor' — remarkable case that, which nearly cost me my life...'The Mysteries Disappearance of Radagast, The Return of the Balrog', Hello, hello, capital index this, I can't fault it. Listen to this, Bingo. 'Ringwraiths in the Second Age, Ringwraithism in Folklore." Holmes turned over the pages with feverish eagerness, but after a short, intensive, perusal, threw down the great tome with a snort of disappointment.

"Rubbish, Bingo, utter rubbish! What have we to do with shadowy corpses who stalk the living and can only be despatched by the magic swords of wizards in pointy hats? It's complete poppycock!"

"But surely," said I, "the Ringwraith is not necessarily a ghostly spectre? A living person might have developed the habit of draining the lifeblood from his victims? I have read, for example, of weak old men feeding on buxom young women to slake their unholy appetites..."

"Your fondness for cheap pornographic literature will not help us to unravel this mystery, Bingo. But you are right, the world has plenty of perverts in it.
No Ringwraiths are needed or wanted. I fear that we cannot take Boffin very seriously. Possibly this letter may shed further light on the mystery."

With that Holmes began to read the second letter with a chuckle. But the smile of cynical amusement which played across his coldly aristocratic features gradually faded away into an expression of intense interest and mounting concern. Finally, with a start, he aroused himself and said:

"Here, read it for yourself. The author claims he knows you."

Dear Mr Tunnelly,
Tunnelly, Grabbit and Bungler, Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths.
(it began).

The matter in question is one of extreme delicacy as it concerns a close friend of mine and the bizarre behaviour of his beautiful young wife, Mythopeia. I believe she is of foreign extraction, but even that does not excuse the foul sorceries I am about to unfold to you. The Lady has never been in rude health but lately a deathly pallor and sickness have come over her so that now she appears more dead than alive. She was a right little cracker when my friend married her, as we say in these parts, but now she is nothing more than a hideous shadow, a sex-crazed witch queen, a dwimmerlaik. In short - a RINGWRAITH!

Forgive me if I speak plainly. Mythopeia is my friend's second wife. She has a son from her previous marriage, and my friend has another from his previous marriage. His own child is a strapping lad of twelve, cruelly disfigured by an appalling skin condition, and partially disabled by a hunchback which makes him lope like monkey rather than walk like a normal boy. A week ago, my friend came home unexpectedly to find his wife belabouring his boy with an umbrella! According to his housekeeper, Mrs Shortbottom, his once beautiful and loving wife has turned into a Ringwraith — a creature of unspeakable evil which figures in the mythology of the Shire.

But this was a small offence compared to Mythopeia's conduct toward her own son, a gentle lad of fourteen with all the charm and beauty of his mother. The housekeeper, Mrs Shortbottom, has heard the most lascivious groans and cries coming from the boy's bedroom, and seen her mistress leaving her son's bed wearing nothing more than a flimsy nightgown. At first the good woman took it for a sick fancy bred of her mistress' hot foreign blood, and the mushrooms to which she has suddenly become hopelessly addicted. But the visits continued, and now the boy is so weak he cannot leave his bed and has lost the power of speech. His mother has become a walking shadow of her former self and spends her days poring over ancient scrolls in the library — when she is not sucking the lifeblood from her own son! Three nights ago Mrs Shortbottom finally confronted the hellish fiend during one of her nightly visits to her son's room.

"By Jove! To think that such things should happen here in the Shire. She sounds a fiend in human guise, if human she is! I fear Mr Boffin is only too accurate in describing her as a Ringwraith. Hello, this is even worse Holmes:"

When she opened the door she found the naked boy clasped in his mother's arms with her lips fastened upon his groin and her emaciated hands trying to tear a ring from his finger. It took all the housekeeper's Hobbit strength to pull the Wraith off the boy, who till the last tried to suck the blood from his quivering flesh. What did this creature of the night do then? Why, Mr Holmes, she offered the good woman MONEY to keep silent! Nay, she begged her on bended knee to say nothing to my friend, her husband! But Mrs Shortbottom would not keep silent. She told my friend the awful truth of Mythopeia's debaucheries and dragged him to her bedchamber where he saw the child's blood on her nightgown and on her vile lips with his own eyes! There was nothing more to do but to confine her to her room in which she has been an unwilling prisoner ever since.

P. S. I believe you know Bingo Bracegirdle? I played tiddlywinks for the first IX when I was his fag at Longbottom College. It is the only personal introduction I can give.

Desperately yours, O Boffin esq. (MA. oxon)

"Why Holmes this is as clear a case of Ringwraithism as one could find. The woman is evidently utterly enslaved to some Dark Power. Nothing less could explain this appalling catalogue of violence, incest, depravity and necrophilia."

"Necrophilila, Bingo?"

"Why, yes. No LIVING Person could commit such appalling acts. Therefore she is a RINGWRAITH. In short, one of the Undead."

"Have you learned nothing in all these years, Bingo? Must you always jump to the fantastical before eliminating the practical? I confess that if your brains were dynamite you would not have enough to blow your hat off!
Do you remember this chap?"

"Well, er, yes," I mumbled. "I do recall big Odo Boffin. He was rather keen on me for a time in the way that boys at Prep School often are..."
"You don't surprise me, Bingo," said Holmes."It explains the high colour which I observed mounting to your cheeks as you read that letter. We shall get on much better if you will fix your attention on the facts rather than the contents of your codpiece. You know my feelings upon sex. Sex is boring. Incest is relatively boring and necrophilia is dead boring. But I digress. Take down this message, there's a good fellow: 'Will take your case with pleasure. Stop. Strongly recommend mushrooms are NOT forbidden your wife. Stop. Expect us tomorrow at noon. Stop.' There, send that off by carrier-crow would you, Bingo?"

Promptly at 11.42 the next day the Eagle deposited us at the Central Eyrie in East Gillyath. At two minutes to twelve we were ushered into Mr Boffin's private study at his mansion in King's Whortleberry.

"Hullo, Bingo," he said with rather more warmth than I would have liked to hear.
"—Do sit down Mr Boffin," Holmes interrupted, "You look completely done-in."
"I am a broken man, Mr Holmes, and there's no point in denying it. I see it is no use pretending. I am the unhappy wretch in that letter!"
"So I deduced," said Holmes curtly.
"Of course you did, but can you imagine my horrible predicament when the scrummy lovely I married turns into...into...into..."

"A Ringwraith?" I queried.

"Quite so, quite so," muttered Boffin tearfully. "Oh the shame and horror of it! How is a gentlehobbit to go to the Shirrifs which such a tale? And yet the kiddies have to be protected. Is it madness, Mr Holmes? Is it possession? Is it hot fire in her pants? For Eru's sake, give me some counsel for I am at my wits end!"
"Quite probably, Mr Boffin," said Holmes. "Now sit down, pull yourself together and give me a few answers. I can assure you that I am far from being at my wit's end, and that I am confident we will find the solution. Firstly are the children in any danger?"
"No, the children are safe. We had the most dreadful scene. She used to be such a loving woman. She has not spoken a word to me since Mrs Shortbottom — my housekeeper — locked her in her room. Such cries. Such howls at night. She is become a wraith, Mr Holmes, A RINGWRAITH!"

"Dear, dear, Mr Boffin, calm yourself, calm yourself. Tell me, what is all this about a 'Ringwraith'?"
"Surely you have heard of 'Ringwraiths' Mr Holmes? Why the Red book of old Mr Baggins, my ancestor, is full of the dreadful deeds of these fell creatures. They possess the living and suck the life from them until they are become shadows of their shadow, though I confess the sexual element baffles me. Perhaps Mr Baggins left that out. He was a Bachelor, you know and not much given to displays of intimacy with the opposite sex, or even his own sex—"

"—But these are fairy-tales, Mr Boffin," Holmes interrupted, "out of another age."
"You would not say that if you had seen what I have seen."
"For the present,"said Holmes, "I am more interested in the ring your wife was trying to take from her child which you mentioned in your letter. It may not be without significance."
"My boy, Shagbag gave it to my step-son, Arragont, on his Birthday two weeks ago."
"These are unusual names for Hobbit-children?"
"My first wife was from Mordor, Mr Holmes, if the name means anything to you."
"Mordor? Ah, yes, it was re-settled in the last century was it not? I hear that Lake Nurnen has become something of a fashionable watering-hole for the younger set, though I confess it is a little 'fast' for my tastes. No doubt Bingo has savoured its attractions. And your wife's son, Arragont?"
"Named after her grandfather, a Hobbit with airs and graces above his station who claimed to have been the intimate of Royalty in Tirith Minor."
"I see," said Holmes opening his pocket book and making a few swift notes.

"And when did this trouble start?"
"Two weeks ago."
"Who else lives with you in the house?"
"Mrs Shortbottom, the housekeeper, my boy, Shagbag, (here he sobbed bitterly), the Cook, Mrs Lickspittle, my wife, Mythopeia and her son, Arragont. (here he sobbed even more bitterly)."
"I gather that you did not know your wife long before you married her?"
"Not long, no. We met three weeks ago in a Fantasy chat-room."
"How long has Mrs Shortbottom been with you?"
"Many years."
"Did your wife give any explanation of why she struck Shagbag?"
"None, other than that she hated him."
"That's not unknown among stepmothers", I interjected. "She is probably jealous."

"Is she jealous of him?" asked Holmes.
"Yes! Yes! She is jealous of him with every fibre of her fiery and passionate nature."
"And the boy, Shagbag? Did he give no explanation for these violent and unprovoked assaults upon him?" asked Holmes.
"No, none."
"Was there a sexual relationship between them?"
"Good grief, Sir, NO!"
"But there was with Arragont?"
"Yes. As I explained in my letter, she was banging him nightly, the dirty bitch!"
"Steady on, Mr Boffin. There is no need for such inflammatory language."

"You have no idea what I have had to suffer, Mr Holmes. The names she called me. Why, the very night the housekeeper exposed her wickedness she came to my bed. To MY bed Sir, and would have sucked the life blood from me if I had let her. I can still taste her foul kisses. She was beside herself! Begging me to give the child into her keeping. The very child she was debauching but an hour before! If you had lived through the nightmare of these last weeks you would understand my loathing for her. She is utterly depraved!"

"There is then, no love lost between your son and your wife?" Holmes asked quietly.
"No, I've told you, she HATES him with a passion."
"And between you and your son?"
Boffin's tortured face softened and he sighed deeply.
"Never was there such a devoted lad. My life is his life. I love him dearly. Especially since his poor Mamma was drownded in Lake Nurnen in a boating accident."
"And was he equally devoted to his real mother - your first wife?"
"Most devoted."

"He certainly seems a most interesting boy," said Holmes. "There is one small point about these assaults. Did they coincide with the—"

"—sex-crazed attacks of my wife upon her son?" finished Boffin bitterly. "No. The first assault took place two weeks ago, others followed. It is only in the last week that my wife has transferred her filthy desires to Arragont."
"I see," said Holmes, "That puts a different complexion on matters".
"I don't follow you?" said Boffin.

"Possibly not. One forms preliminary hypotheses and waits for further and fuller intelligence to corroborate or explode them. It is the scientific method. I will only say at this juncture that your problem does not appear to be incapable of resolution. If you would be so kind as to show us the rest of the house I should be most grateful."

NEXT PAGE - THE THRILLING CONCLUSION!

© 2002 Mercedes Dannenberg. Picture and construction © 2004 utterpants.co.uk
Revised by the Author in March 2005

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