“My Lord and members of the jury, may we now present case number twenty-two, accused by the Crown of eavesdropping and attempted burglary.”
The weary magistrate hardly acknowledged the approach of his last case of the day, waving a tired hand, gesturing for all to be seated as he finished his hasty scribbles summarizing the previous case. One after another they had rolled in today, and all he wanted was to send this next perpetrator on to trial so he could go home where his pipe, bathtub and hot cup of tea waited for him before a roaring fire. He adjusted his twisted magistrate’s wig of voluptuous curls, and croaked tiredly, “yes yes, continue bailiff. The crown requires you to read the prisoner’s intake information for the men of the jury. ” He leaned back, with his eyes slightly closed. He could almost taste his pipe.
There was lengthy pause.
“Bailiff, please continue.”
“Yes, my Lord. Uh…well…under ‘name’ the prisoner has written ‘Beeswax, Nun O’Yours.’
“Pardon ME? What is the meaning of this?” The magistrate sat up straight and glared across the court room. It was then that he saw the prisoner. The justice hadn’t bothered to even look at the accused when he entered the room—they all looked the same to him after a day’s full of petty thefts and jay-walkers--but this man was certainly different. The first question was whether he could actually be called a man at all. No, the magistrate decided, this was a boy, but an odd boy indeed. His face looked so young, but his eyes were so ancient. The prisoner sat in the dock with his arms bent behind his head,
“Young man, you will remove your hat immediately, wipe that impertinent grin from your face and sit up straight! You are making yourself ridiculous.”
The boy sat up slowly and removed his hat, but his smile only widened as if to say, “don’t you see how ridiculous YOU are, my Lord?”
The magistrate glared indignantly at the boy as he straightened his wig. Without moving his glance from the boy, he instructed the Bailiff to continue.
“Uh, place o’ residence is described as uh…’not here.’”
“Is it, now?” Said the justice under his breath, and he scribbled furiously. “Bailiff, you may cease your introduction, I will address the prisoner myself.”
“Young man, what is your name if you please?”
“Peter, your eminence. Peter Pan.”
Hmph. Finally, they were getting somewhere, the magistrate considered to himself. Sometimes intimidation was the only way with these young criminals. “Young man, how many years are you?” He continued in his sternest voice.
“375 your highest-ness” replied the boy with his grin widening.
“Stop being ridiculous young man; how many birthdays have you had?”
“OH!” The boy chuckled, “I don’t know the answer to that I’m afraid. We have birthday parties all the time. Maybe a few thousand then?”
The boy looked strangely earnest as if we was slightly appreciative that the magistrate was actually interested in birthday parties. The magistrate was not interested. He scribbled furiously.
“Young man, I am tired of your tom-foolery.”
“It’s Peter your Gracefulness, not Tom.”
“MASTER PAN.” The justice breathed deeply; he lowered his voice. “This is not the kind of behavior which I allow in my court. Now can we continue without any more of this nonsense?”
“Sir yes sir, no nonsense sir.” Pan replied, somewhat earnestly.
“Hmph” replied the tired magistrate. The last case of the day was not going to get his blood pressure up. He just needed to wrap this up, calmly and quickly. He took a deep breath. The magistrate lifted the paper which the bailiff had presented to him and scanned through the various details.
“Master Pan, is it true that late last night, you were found sneaking into a third story window of the corner house located at 235 Regent street, and were caught in the act of attempted robbery?”
“Well your superlativeness, I would say ‘sneaking’ is not EXACTLY what I was doing, but it was more like skulking, or maybe slinking—”
“I WAS NOT-” The magistrate paused for a deep breath “…finished, young man.” Pan smiled an irritating smile.
“Sorry your wonderfulness.”
The magistrate ignored this sarcasm and continued, “and is it not true, young man, that you have several, if not many times, spied on the family residing at 235 Regent Street and even gone so far as to torture the family dog?” The magistrate looked up. The boy was smiling brightly, which he found to be extremely irritating. “Well? What have you got to say for yourself? Be brief. These men,” he gestured to the grand jury, “will either acquit you based on your testimony and my judgement, or they will accuse you and your case will be sent to trial. Do you understand?” Pan nodded. “Proceed.” The magistrate began to write again.
“Well, your holiness’” Pan wriggled uncomfortably in his chair, “it wasn’t exactly as you say. I didn’t sneak in any window. Sneaking is very low, and I like to think of myself as a bit of a gentleman. I don’t go places where I’m not invited. Well, I haven’t lately anyways, not since last week.” He wriggled uncomfortably. “And anyways, the window was open, and I flew in, which is much more genteel than the commonplace sneaking.”
“You flew in? What do you mean by that?” The magistrate said, drolly. What an odd duck this boy was.
“It’s how I get around usually. You know. Like a bird.”
“Well damn, if this boy isn’t just an idiot,” the magistrate thought to himself. He felt a little more sympathetic now. Maybe all this strange child needed was a few years at the mental hospital. “Yes, my boy,” he said with forced sympathy, “of course you flew in, but why were you there?”
“For the stories sir. You see, Wendy tells stories about me every evening and I like to listen outside the window and well, last night, after the stories were over and I had flown off, I realized I’d accidentally left my shadow behind. Well, I hadn’t so much left it as I had it torn off of me by the idiot nursemaid. See, that’s the dog your Benevolence. She is really the stupidest dog, quite as dumb as a brick. She wouldn’t know a shadow if she saw one. Anyways, so, all I was doing, you see is flying about outside, listening at the window and trying to rescue my shadow, which IS my OWN property.” He stopped for a breath and looked up expectantly at the judge, as if he thought he might commiserate. The magistrate just glared from behind his spectacles. Peter continued.
“Anyhow, Wendy, that’s the girl, I saw that she had stuffed my poor shadow inside of her sewing box, and so I just sort of slipped in quietly after the blokes were all in bed to take back what was rightfully mine. I didn’t mean to disturb anyone, but you’ve got to admit they had it coming. Locking one’s shadow in a box is bound to come back and bite you. She had no right to do that you know.” He was becoming visibly frustrated. “Well everyone knows that girls can be a bit thick at times. Anyway, I wasn’t going to press charges or anything, so I just broke open the lock and liberated my Shadow, and we would have just left quietly, but he simple insisted on starting a fight with me. See, he’s never been on his own before, and I think he quite liked the idea of night on the town…which is ridiculous, obviously.”
Peter looked up expectantly for empathy, but all the expressions of the room were a mixture of confusion and pity.
“Young man,” the judge interrupted, “I think we’ve heard enough.” He gave a knowing look to the jury, all of whom shook their heads incredulously. “I believe we can let this go, Bailiff, please escort this young man out.” Peter smiled, and marched gaily out behind the Bailiff.
The judge heaved a great sigh moments later as he disrobed in the small, adjoining quarters. This generation was turning out so weak in the head, he considered. Well, he couldn’t let that stop him from a relaxing evening in front of his fire.
As he alighted from his carriage after a brief ride home, he noticed a light on, shining through his open bedroom window. “Ah,” he thought to himself cheerfully. “O’Grady’s anticipated my arrival.” He imagined his bath already drawn and his nightly cheese tray laid by as he climbed the stairs.
“O’Grady?” There was no response from his valet as he walked in. He entered his bedroom and was rather surprised to see that although there was a fire roaring and water in the bath, his usually serious valet was sitting with mouth agape, in his favorite easy chair. He absently held a small package, wrapped with brown paper and string. At his feet lay the remnants of charcuterie scattered carelessly on the floor. Bits of cracker and cheese smushed into the carpet.
The valet, at seeing his employer, jumped to his feet. “Pardon sir,” he said hastily handing the package to the magistrate. “This parcel just…arrived sir.” He dropped to his knees and began to gather up the scattered food. The valet did not look up, but began to speak as he cleaned, “Sir, I apologize for the short notice, but I need to take a short holiday. I believe I’m unwell.”
“Well, O’Grady, I’m sorry to hear that.” The magistrate responded without sympathy, eyeing the wasted cheeses. “I hope it’s not serious.”
“I’m sure its nothing sir, but I’m just overtired. I imagined that as I was bringing in this tray, a boy was standing in the window where I found the parcel, and then I thought he crowed like a rooster and flew away.”
The magistrate started. “Ah, well yes, very good then O’Grady, that will be all. Forget the tray this evening. I’ll raid the cupboard”
As O’Grady left the room with the discarded tray, the magistrate turned toward the fire. He slowly unwrapped the strange parcel, and inside found a bar of soap. It looked like it had been used. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. A short note was enclosed. It read as follows:
Your heftiness, in case you should ever lose your shadow and need to reattach, I found this to be sort of helpful. PP
