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The events of My Naked Shame continue…
BANE
Pottering to adjust a framed photo of me on my first pony (Biscuit, a real gentleman) against the turquoise wallpaper of my hallway, a shadow fell on my front door, and an envelope fell on my doormat. Instead of the sickeningly routine circulars and bills, I stooped to pick up a manila envelope, with my name in red ink written on the front, Lady Venetia Haven-Smythe.
It contained a chunky greetings card, completely white and unadorned outside. Inside, it bore a single sentence, again in hand-written red: ‘Remember the documents you stole, and the lies they printed about me? By reading this, you set the clock of my revenge ticking. BT.’
BT meant Bane Thorn. I think.
“Set the clock of my revenge ticking” meant bomb, to a tabloid detective. I could hear it nearby. I opened the door. It was taped to the wood, and the card must have activated it.
Gloriously ignoring any thought of health and safety, I tore it off and dashed to deposit it in my ornamental pond. Immediately a plume of water erupted from the surface, and when it splashed back down, bubbling oil rose in its place. Along with several gently steaming fish. This attempt on my life had top London PR written all over it.
Basically Bane, I vow, you have attacked the wrong woman. Because those koi in the pond were not cheap, and I am absolutely not looking forward to the bill for cleaning and restocking a 15 foot by 15 foot pond.
DIABOLICAL
In my hallway, Major Damien Harris-Argyll thoughtfully tapped one of the umbrellas in the tall ceramic stand and frowned. “In all my years in bomb disposal, I never met a more diabolical plan than a card which set a bomb in motion. Attached to a front door too. I must say, this Bane Thorn fellow is an astonishingly rum cove, what what? The mechanism was adapted from the device within a novelty card which makes it play a melody, and was rigged to a radio-transmitter. Fiendish. Utterly fiendish.”
“Make no mistake. He’s a fiend on a collision course with another front page revelation – it’s the only language he understands.”
