Mystery, A Play in 3 Acts, 4 courses drinks with a coffee chaser

"où le début"

6 people are stranded at the chateau
With unusual names
The names of the dog kings
Of old:
They are Duke, Fluffy,
King, Snoopy, Queeny,
And Ethel the Sullen.

Entering from stage left
A naked butler
sporting lightening bolt tattoos
Serving aperitifs
as nachos dally on a warming tray

Ethel the Sullen is the lush
She tries to drown herself
But the small glasses thwart her
So she licks
The dew the condensation

King (from his throne): Butler, I require paper.
The anger is so great
A carbonated ire
Heat radiates, wildly pulsing
Through pores
Hair standing on end.

Fluffy in a snit tears at plastered walls
The empty spaces in-between
Fume with concentrated wrath
And the insulation bunches to make way.
Suddenly the lights are extinguished.
From center stage we hear a strangled oath
Then nothing.

Faint glow of lightening bolt
See in the dark
But faded with age
The butler, a veteran
An old salt
Flings open the drapes
Musty, heavy, fringy-stringy
Parted they allow late afternoon sun.

Chiming the doorbell and a knocker
Wrought iron, queries the sleuth
A pipe and plaid the overcoat
The serving tray upset
Duke lapping up nachos
Every crumb accounted for
Where are Queeny’s beads?

Enters stage right no assistance
Dutch Bantam, the rapacious eye.
He searches with every tool
Each ashtray is overturned
Every fingerprint interrogated
Snoopy is vacuumed and put to bed
He is not a fraud he is
guiltless an aficionado of leisure
Not a thief or murderer.

Like the eerie atmosphere
After a storm
A stampede of mild follicles retreat
Then swell and
Wiggle madly
Before the raging tempest abides:
A patron from the balcony cries out
With a back flip it is a red herring
And a fish out of water.

Queeny pronates opossumly
fingerdigits splicerated
Are not a word, enthroned is
On a bear rug it is course
And covers a loose board
With no nail and no nail hole
Overlooked by the clucking eye;
Infallible only One holds claim
To that.

Knowing full well Ethel’s penchant
She bears the full brunt of a tasteless
Powder
And lies in a stupor to death
While King impaled with microfibres
Embedded and deadly
He drools sacrosanct of the crime
Turns over end up with a rash.

This pulsating heart, racing
Drugged Duke is frantic
The energy he sits he stands he pants
Lathering he walls up Fluffy
Who moans ghostlike
For awhile
Lamenting for an age
They expire, Fluffy and Duke.

Nothing is left but to deduce
The butler au naturale
Did it apparently
While Snoopy snored --

‘Twas an err, for
Up rose the Queen
Resplendent in her beads
Ninja speedy she
Dices and
Adds the bloody evidence
To her decrepit menagerie
Of toxic assets.

Dressed for dinner
Snoopy escorts his Queeny
And the butler wears a bowtie, serves
Bouillabaisse and Coq au vin
With a Crème Brulee and coffee.