Vlad's Bones

Vlad the Impaler and Mrs Heppleheimer were the main topics of discussion in the snug of the Cock and Bull last Sunday night. Not a natural connection, I hear you cry, but bear with me as I tell a tale that is odd even by Sleepy Hamlet’s standards.

The whole incident had started when a couple from the village, who had won a trip for two to Bucharest in a magazine, had come back and were recounting the tale of their trip to the Snagov Monastery.

The Snagov Monastery was reputed to house the bones of the infamous Romanian Prince, Vlad the Impaler. But sometime between his death in 1476 and when an archaeologist had opened his crypt in 1931, they had gone missing. The people responsible, according to the Hamlet couple’s tour guide, were the Saxons who had suffered terribly along with the Turks at the hands of this 15th century despot. And it was the ‘Saxon’ connection that had piqued the interest of the Hamlet Genealogical Society, who just happened to be having a quiet drink in the Cock and Bull that night.

Now the Hamlet Genealogical Society had one function: To create a family tree for Mrs Heppleheimer. Not that the Bavarian loony bin had commissioned them to do so, but because she came from outside the village and wouldn’t tell anyone of her past, so they had been tasked with the job of working it out for themselves. This had called for a lot of tenuous links to be elaborated into full on insinuations, but they had proven to be more than up to the job. And over the years a fairly comprehensive family tree had been drawn up, but there were, of course, large gaps and as a consequence the Heppleheimer family tree was a constant work in progress.

But the Vlad the Impaler connection was one that had gotten their gossip ridden senses dripping with anticipation and by the end of the night, fuelled with more misinformation and far too many pints of Squirrels Best Bitter, the tidily Barmpots had come to the wholly unsubstantiated conclusion that Mrs Heppleheimer and her family were guilty of ‘having it away with Vlad’s bones’. This scurrilous conclusion would’ve been overlooked in itself. But because of the large volume of brain addling liquid they’d collectively consumed and the fact that one thing invariably leads to another in these situations, they’d taken in upon themselves to report her to Interpol in the hope that the massed police forces of the world could get her to return the counts bones to the Romanian government. This was not only a massive oversight on their behalves, but something that they were all going to live to regret. Although no one knew for sure exactly how long they’d live if Mrs Heppleheimer ever found out, it was generally agreed that ‘swift’ would be a good way of describing their collective demises.

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And so it was a weary Interpol underling that arrived at Fershlugginer cottage, home of Mrs Heppleheimer, the next morning with a dossier under his arm containing a written transcript and a tape of the messages that had been left on their recording machine the night before. Mrs Heppleheimer allowed the underling in more out of curiosity about what the loonies in the village had been up to than anything else. So when the agent set up the tape and switched the machine on, this is what the Hamlet Genealogical Society had left on Interpol’s overnight tape:

Er... hello this is the Hamlet...
Psssstt...What...
Don’t say who you are...
Why not?
We don’t want Mrs Heppleheimer finding out that’s why.
Why does she work for Interpol?
No but they’ll tell her... (Pause)
oh hel...’Click’ end of first message.

Second message: Hello this is...’click’, end of second message

Third Message ...’click’...end of third message

Forth message: Hello this isn’t the people who called you a while ago claiming to be from Sleepy Hamlet. We’d like to say that we’ve solved the international case of the missing bones of Vlad the Impaler and what’s more we have the address of the culprit for you in Sleepy Hamlet. Not that were from there, we just heard. We live a long, long way away. We don’t even drink in the Cock and Bull, we drink somewhere else...and it’s a long way away...a very long way away. Anyway, her name’s Mrs Heppleheimer and you’d better bring about a thousand officers...you’re going to need it. Right that’s it...Tom, how do you switch this off...what? oh...’click’ end of fourth message.

Mrs Heppleheimer sat still for a moment. The Interpol agent could see that she was reaching boiling point and ready to explode. Her fists curled and she went from nought to Bavarian in about 2.3 seconds, then stormed out of the house and headed towards the village for an unscheduled rendezvous with the Hamlet Genealogical Society. The Interpol agent, now quite interested at the turn of events, gathered up his papers and tapes then followed her out.

Meanwhile, at 21 Hamlet Villas, Mr Glebe had just woken up and was slowly taking in the pleasant sounds of village life: The birds chirping in the trees at the end of his garden and the gentle sound of the river Brimsmal just beyond that. As he smiled at yet another perfect day in Sleepy Hamlet, his mind started to do what minds always seem to do on occasions like this; it rewinds to the part of your immediate past that either activates your embarrassment chip or sends dread into your very bones. In Mr Glebe’s case, it was the latter. And just as his bones began to fill with the dread brought on by the memory of the previous night’s phone call, the sound of his front door being crashed in by something that appeared to be both peeved and Bavarian came to his ears. He had just enough time to pull the covers up over his eyes before the bedroom door went the same way as his front.

For the next few hours, the Interpol agent was party to a swathe of confession signings that would’ve made a Guantanamo Bay official stand up and say ‘Now hang on a minute, that’s a bit harsh’. But never the less within a few hours Mrs Heppleheimer had managed to get all involved to recant everything they’d said, admit to overt tiddliness brought on by inherited stupidity and give solemn promises never to trouble Interpol again. This done and all confessions signed and handed to the now very amused Interpol underling, Mrs Heppleheimer left the village once more for the sanctity of her beloved cottage. The Interpol agent climbed into his car and headed off from whence he came while the village did it’s best to get on with a day that had been well and truly ‘Heppleheimered’.

But it has to be said that not all was as it seemed: Just because Mrs Heppleheimer dealt with what she saw as dissention in her ranks, did not mean that there was not a grain of truth in what had been said, and this may have been the reason Mrs Heppleheimer had acted with the decisive ferocity that she did. For even in an ocean of gossip there sometimes floats to the surface the flotsam and jetsam of truth and honesty. And as Mrs Heppleheimer walked into her home, this little tale of ours was about to receive its final twist.

It wasn’t the fact that she turned a secret panel aside and walked down stairs that were carved out of the villages very foundations. It wasn’t that those stairs opened into a cavernous vault that housed countless objects; some too worrying to reveal. No, it was the little brown insignificant box that Mrs Heppleheimer was now holding with such reverence that was the twist in our tale. For on that box were the neatly written words: ‘Shin bone of Vlad the Impaler’. And beneath that box was a sheet of paper naming all the Heppleheimers around the world and the bone fragments that they held in trust.

She gently placed the box back onto the shelf, patted in fondly, then headed back up into the little cottage above.

Sleepy Hamlet © 2010 Karl Dixon