The Lower Strangling Chronicles
He found an old toy whilst clearing out his attic, and John could think of nothing else as he was serving customers in his family’s pub, the Hangman’s Noose.
It was a small, intricately painted wooden box, gold and red. But it required a key to do anything, and John could find nothing within the other dusty, cobweb-ridden cardboard boxes in the attic.
Most of the day, John stared blankly into space as his friends talked to each other in front of him.
He appeared to be taking in their conversation, but in reality, there was only enough space in his mind for the strange box he found in the attic.
“Is a return trip to Australia on the horizon, Bruce?” Robert Sherman, John’s personal brewer and best friend, said as he took a sip of Throckmorton Ale, which he brewed himself.
Bruce, a retired hunter whom John hired to poach nearby livestock illegally so he didn’t need to buy any himself, shrugged as he reached for his Fosters.
“Next year, maybe,” he said. “To be honest, I’m not very good at booking holidays.”
Paul, John’s wine merchant, chuckled. “A man after John’s own heart. Isn’t that right, John?”
He glanced over at John, but the publican was clearly miles away.
“You alright, mate?” Bruce said, clicking his fingers in front of John.
But John did not respond. He blankly stared into space, frozen in time.
Nothing brought him back into the land of the living until a gaunt-looking man arrived at the bar.
“A Throckmorton Ale, please,” the man said in an assertive voice.
John sprang into action, rapidly shaking his head and gawping at the man. “Yeah, sure. One pint coming up.”
The man glanced around the pub. “It’s quite nice in here, isn’t it?”
“It’s not bad, mate,” Bruce said, taking a swig of his Fosters.
John slid a pint glass of ale towards the man. “I’m John, by the way. Welcome to Lower Strangling.”
The man gave John a firm handshake. “I’m Pete, a pleasure to meet you.”
His fellow barflies introduced themselves to him, and Pete quickly discovered that he was the only outsider at the bar.
“What brings you to our humble village, Pete?” Paul said, over the rim of his wine glass. “Just a visiting or….?”
“I’m staying nearby,” Pete said. “Our Circus is being set up in a field nearby. I’m a clown.”
“Aw, mate,” Bruce said, placing a hand on Pete’s arm. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Sure, working in a circus isn’t a conventional career choice, but I’m sure it’s still worthwhile.”
“I think he performs in the circus as a clown,” Robert said in Bruce’s ear.
“Ah,” Bruce said, glancing at the man next to him. “So you go around on a half a bike scaring the hell out of little kids, do you?”
Pete laughed. “No, no. That’s just an unfortunate coincidence. My main intention is to amuse everyone and make them laugh.”
“Sure it is,” Bruce said, finishing the dregs of his can.
Pete adjusted his position on the stool and sipped his beer. “I must say your village has managed to rest my mind, somewhat.”
“Don’t tell me your make-up gives you the heebie jeebies as well,” Bruce said.
Pete almost fell off his stool from laughing. “If only. I’ve actually been thinking about something strange that happened in my trailer this morning.”
John’s face lit up, and he leaned closer to the circus performer. “Really? What happened?”
Pete leaned closer to the publican and took a swig of Ale. “Well, this morning I noticed a pentagram drawn on my chest of drawers with white chalk.”
John nodded slowly. “Interesting.”
“But here’s the thing, I don’t use the chest of drawers, and no one else shares my trailer with me.”
“I assume the pentagram wasn’t on there when you bought the drawers,” Paul said, swirling the wine in his glass.
“No,” Paul said. “I didn’t buy them. There came with the trailer when I started becoming a clown. But I only noticed the pentagram this morning.”
“This is why you need to keep your doors triple locked when not present in the property,” Robert chimed in. “That’s what I would have done in your situation.”
“I never leave it unlocked,” Pete said, gawping at Robert. “Even when I’m inside, I lock it from the inside.”
John gently rubbed his chin. “Curiouser and curiouser.”
Just then, a woman wearing a power suit breezed into the pub, only to trip onto a loose bit of carpet and fall over.
Her little squeal alerted John to her predicament.
“I’m sorry, ma’me,” John said, rushing over to help her up. “I’ve been meaning to straighten the carpet for a while.”
The woman stood up and glared at John, who immediately recognised her to be Rachel Donnovan, a Forensic Investigator for Gloucestershire Police.
“I certainly do hope so,” she said, brushing herself off. “It’s a serious health and safety hazard otherwise.”
John laughed nervously, rubbing his nape as he sidled back behind the bar.
“I hope you’re not here on official business,” John said as Rachel eased herself onto the only stool free at the bar. “We could do without another major crime happening around here.”
Pete tugged at his shirt collar and cleared his throat.
“No, I’m just passing through on my way to HQ,” Rachel said as she glanced around the pub. “No one saw me trip over, did they?”
The men at the bar with her gawped and shrugged.
“Good,” Rachel said, relaxing her posture. “My reputation is still upheld.”
“I assume you’ll want something low alcohol,” John said as he sifted through the shelves behind him. “Since you’re on the job.”
“Yes, of course,” Rachel said. “I’ll have the Throckmorton Zero.”
“Sure thing,” John said as he whipped out a bottle and slid it over to her.
“Hey, since you’re a detective,” Bruce said, leaning closer to Rachel. “Maybe you could help this clown here with his mystery.”
“I’m a Forensic Investigator, actually,” Rachel said, uncapping her drink and sipping from the bottle. “But I’m happy to listen to any woe you may have.”
Pete recounted his predicament to Rachel, but as he did so, Rachel’s eyes bulged as her mind travelled back in time.
A Field Outside Lower Strangling- Two Hours Previously
Rachel Donnovan knelt in the cornfield, examining a rather deep gash running along the head of a corpse.
She stood up and turned towards the Detective on the case, who was interviewing a young woman in a flowery dress.
“I see, and where was the cook when the victim left the premises?” He asked, scribbling away in his notebook.
The young woman gazed at the sky and gently rubbed the back of her neck. “Well, she was in the kitchen making our dinner. We didn’t think anything odd about Mr Jefferson leaving because we knew he was going to check on the Clown School.”
Rachel stepped over to the Detective and witness, clearing her throat to get their attention.
“The murderer killed the victim via a blow to the head, possibly with a wrench,” Rachel said, gesturing to the body.
The Detective crouched down to examine the wound himself.
“It may be unrelated, but I also noticed this pentagram etched into the victim’s skin,” Rachel said, pointing to a red star on the victim’s chest.
The Detective gently stroked his chin as he inspected the star itself. “This doesn’t look like a regular tattoo.”
“That’s because it isn’t,” Rachel said. “It’s been scratched into his skin with some small blade, sometime after death.”
The Detective turned back towards the young woman he was interviewing. “Are you aware of any local Satanic cults in the area?”
The woman shrugged and shook her head. “Not that I know, certainly none that Mr Jefferson would have bothered.”
She gazed at Mr Jefferson and frowned. “It’s a shame someone killed him in this way. He was the best ring leader we have had. Very passionate about us being original and bold with our performance.”
“Sounds like a fascinating gentleman,” the Detective said, scribbling in his notebook. “I’ll make sure his killer receives justice.”
Rachel scanned the ground beneath her for further clues, and sure enough, she found something.
A golden key lay in the dirt, shining beneath her shoe.
Rachel raised her eyebrows and crouched down to pick up the key.
She scrutinised the object in her hand, furrowing and releasing her brows.
Rachel turned towards the Detective and his witness, who were both engrossed in conversation.
“Our next show is going to have an Intergalactic theme,” the woman said, a small smile on her face. “With aliens instead of clowns and special effects.”
“That’s certainly a different take on the norm,” the Detective said, jotting notes down in his notebook.
Rachel cleared her throat to get their attention. “I found this key near the body.”
The Detective scrunched his nose as he examined the key. “Do you think the perpetrator drew the pentagram with this?”
“No,” Rachel said, pointing to the end of the key. “There’s no blood on it, and the end is blunt. But I think the victim may have had it in his possession.”
The Detective pursed his lips as he analysed the object. “Perhaps it was the door key to his luxury Winnabego, which his less lucky employees were jealous of as they made do with their tiny caravans.”
The woman shook her head. “Mr Jefferson very much saw us all as equals, and his accommodation was the same as ours.”
“Right,” the Detective said, noting this revelation down.
“I don’t think a member of the circus murdered him,” the woman said. “An outsider must have attacked him on his way to the Clown school.”
“Also, this isn’t a door key,” Rachel said, placing the key into a sandwich bag. “It most likely fits through a small hole in some box.”
“Is the box conveniently near the body?” the Detective asked, leaning over the crime scene to check himself.
“He didn’t have it in his possession,” Rachel said. “Whatever this key opens is somewhere else, and we need to find it to find the killer.”
The Detective glanced at Rachel, then to his witness, and nodded in acknowledgement.
As he did so, Rachel’s mind zoomed through a wormhole, bringing her back into the present.
Rachel jolted in her seat and scanned the room to regain her bearings.
She turned to Pete, who was finishing the dregs of his ale.
“You don’t work at the nearby circus by any chance, do you?” Rachel said through palpitating breaths.
Pete nodded. “I do, yes. I’m one of the clowns, although at our next performance I’m going to be an alien.”
“Strewth, freak the kids out even more, why don’t you?” Bruce said, scrunching up his Fosters and pocketing it.
“Were you aware that someone brutally murdered your Ring Master in the early hours of the morning?” Rachel asked Pete.
Pete’s facial features drooped towards the ground, as did the rest of his head. “No, actually. I didn’t. I’m sorry to hear it.”
Rachel leaned closer to Pete. “I offer you my condolences, but also a pentagram was etched onto his chest, similar to the one drawn onto your chest of drawers with chalk.”
Pete’s eyes widened as his mouth shrank. “Do you think the same person drew them?”
“Well, it’d be a strange coincidence if they weren’t, wouldn’t it?” Bruce said, scoffing.
“Yes, yes, I suppose it would,” Pete said, quickly downing his ale.
“Did Mr Jefferson have any enemies, do you know?” Rachel said, fixing her gaze and arching her eyebrows.
Pete cleared his throat. “Well, there were some people loyal to our previous ringmaster, Ezra Clarke, and didn’t like Tony’s support of Joseph Benson’s insistence that we no longer use real animals in the show.”
“Oh yeah, didn’t he hold Joe hostage in his barber shop last year?” Bruce said. “I remember reading about it in the news.”*
“I don’t remember Ezra being a devout Satanist, though,” Pete said, grimacing. “But any of his loyalists who refused to rejoin the circus after Tony resurrected it.”
Rachel leaned back on her stool, gazing at Pete over the bridge of her nose. “And what are you doing here, if I may ask?”
Pete straightened his posture. “Well, I have the morning off as our show doesn’t start tonight until seven, so I thought I’d have a look at the local area.”
“I see,” Rachel said. “You didn’t see Mr Jefferson’s corpse on your way out of the campsite?”
Pete shook his head. “No. I suppose I noticed Grace talking on the phone, looking quite distraught.”
“She was the one who contacted the police,” Rachel said. “Meaning she’d discovered his body.”
“Yes, clearly she did,” Pete said. “His murderer didn’t kill him at the main circus site, did they?”
Rachel shook her head. “No, the crime scene was in the middle of the corn field, whether that’s where the assailant made their move or whether they dragged him there, I don’t know.”
“When did you last see Tony?” John asked Pete, frowning at him.
Pete pursed his lips and gazed at the ceiling. “I’m not sure. I think I strode past him yesterday afternoon. He appeared quite cheerful then.”
“So you didn’t attend dinner last night, when he told Grace and your cook that he was going to check on the clown school?”
Pete gulped down some Throckmorton Ale. “No. I had something small in my trailer so I could rehearse my alien performance alone.”
Rachel nodded as she scrutinised the clown.
She sifted through her pocket and brought out the gold key.
“Does this look familiar to you?” Rachel said. “I found it near the victim’s body; it was possibly in his possession.”
John’s eyes brightened as he slowly leaned over the bar to get a better view of the object.
“No,” Pete said, analysing the key. “I admit Tony was quite a private person; I didn’t know every aspect of his personal life.”
“I might be able to help there,” John said, gawping at the key.
All eyes turned on the publican, making him feel a little bit hot under the collar.
“In what way?” Rachel said.
“This morning, whilst I was clearing out the attic, I discovered an old box with interesting patterns on it,” John said. “I think it might be a Jack-in-the-Box of one of those musical things.”
“Is this the reason you’ve seemed out of sorts this morning?” Robert said.
“In short, yeah,” John said. “It needs a key to open it, and I couldn’t find one in the attic.”
“How do you know this key will fit?” Bruce said. “It’s just a coincidence, mate.”
“It’s too much of a coincidence not to be,” John said. “I think several dots are connecting.”
Rachel placed the key back into her pocket. “The box is still in your attic, I presume?”
“Yeah,” John said. “Do you want to have a look at it?”
Rachel slid flawlessly off the stool onto her feet. “Yes, if I’m able to.”
A smile flashed across John’s face as he picked up his cottage keys and marched out of the bar.
“Follow me,” he said, marching out of the Noose.
Rachel paraded after him.
The men left at the bar gawped at each other and shrugged, before they set off after the pub landlord and the forensic investigator.
*For a detailed account of the whole sorry affair- read: https://thelowerstranglingchronicles.com/2025/06/16/the-barber-next-door/
A few minutes later, and the gang were cooped up in John’s dusty, dark attic, examining a small, elaborately painted box.
“I must say it certainly appears to be something Tony would have in his collection,” Pete said, gazing at the object. “He always had an eye for the unusual.”
“Where did you get this, mate?” Bruce said, eyeing John.
“I don’t know,” John said, gawping at the box. “It could’ve been up here forever.”
“You mean like when Simon found that Nazi memorabilia in his attic a few years ago?” Bruce said.
“Yeah,” John said, noticing Rachel glaring at him with a raised eyebrow. “Something like that.”
“Shall we unlock the mystery of this item?” Paul said, picking up the box before Robert smacked it out of his hands.
“You should not touch that,” Robert said. “It could be important evidence in a murder investigation.”
“We’ll need to touch it to see if the key fits,” Paul said. “I’m sure the chances of contaminating the crime scene are very low.”
“It is best to be cautious, though,” Rachel said, crouching down and placing the key in the keyhole. “I can try opening it from here.”
The key slid into the hole like a hand through a glove and turned with ease.
John palpitated as he watched Rachel at work, taking a step back.
The key clicked, but nothing happened.
All they could hear was the sound of breathing.
Bruce scoffed. “A little but anticlimactic, isn’t it? So much for that.”
But then, a grotesque clown sprang out from the box, accompanied by a tinny, maniacal laugh.
The onlookers recoiled at the sight.
“Crikey mate! You still sure they’re just meant to be entertainment?” Bruce said, glaring at Pete.
“Yes,” Pete said, clenching his lips and rubbing his nape. “The clowns I’ve played have never been that terrifying.”
Entrance of the Gladiators chimed from a pinhole machine in the box.
“This mysterious box was sitting in your attic,” Paul said, transfixed by the Clown. “And a local ringmaster just so happened to have the key it belongs to.”
“Seems so,” John said, scratching his head. “I’m as confused as you.”
He stared at the strange toy for a moment until a lightbulb illuminated inside his head.
“Wait. I think I remember where this came from.”
“Really?” Rachel said, priming her black pen on her notebook. “How did this box get into your attic?”
“I put it here myself a year ago and forgot about it,” John said. “After I bought it at an auction.”
Bruce grinned. “A great use of your money that was, mate.”
“Yeah. I think Ezra’s belongings were sold off at an auction, and I bought this box,” John said.
“Yes, that was where I bought my belt,” Pete said, revealing the red rope around his waist. “It lined the entrance of Ezra’s original Big Top.”
“Tony’s murder was clearly an act of revenge for Ezra’s downfall,” Rachel said, scribbling away.
“Holding hostage the man who brought him down not enough for him, was it?” Bruce said, chuckling to himself.
“It appears not,” Rachel said, gazing at the box.
After a while, she picked it up and placed it into her bag.
“I’m going to have to take this to HQ, if you don’t mind,” Rachel said, smiling at John. “It’s become an integral part of a murder investigation.”
John gawped at Rachel and shrugged. “By all means, be my guest. I’d forgotten I had it until I discovered it by chance this morning.”
“Great, thanks,” Rachel said, making her way towards the loft exit. “I’m going back to work now. You can do whatever you want.”
John and his posse bid farewell to the forensic investigator as she dissappeared down the ladder.
“Well, this has been an evicting morning,” Bruce said.
“Yeah,” John said, gazing at his watch. “Right, we’d better get back to the Noose, there’s probably a long queue of people waiting for a pint.”
One by one, John and his friends eased themselves down the ladder.
“Are you joining us for a bit longer, or do you need to return to the circus?” Paul said to Pete as he placed his feet onto the ladder’s rungs.
“I’m sure I can have one more drink before I need to return,” Pete said, smiling. “The rehearsal doesn’t start for an hour.”
With that, the clown climbed down the ladder and closed the hatch, plunging John’s loft into darkness.
“She’s gotta tell you who did him in, surely,” Bruce said, downing another can of Fosters. “Considering your box could prove vital.”
“I’d like to know, certainly,” Pete said, sipping his Throckmorton Ale. “Tony was a friend as much as a manager; we deserve justice as much as he does.”
John grunted as he poured a patron their pint. “Hopefully. I don’t think the box meant that much to Ezra, though. It didn’t cost me a fortune to buy it. Probably about fifty quid.”
“Your former ringmaster doesn’t sound like a particularly nice man,” Paul said, swirling a glass of wine and checking its legs. “Old Joseph bringing him down a peg or two is one of the better things this government has achieved.”
“He was a member of the old guard, absolutely,” Pete said, staring into his beer glass. “A time when human entertainment was more important than animal welfare.”
He shuddered before taking another sip of her beer.
“It would be interesting to know the origin of that musical Jack-In-The-Box,” Robert said. “Did Ezra buy it from somewhere, or did he craft it himself?”
John ducked down behind the bar and examined the various bottles hidden behind a grille.
“Dunno, he must’ve been a master craftsman to make it himself, but it did look homemade.”
He opened the cupboard and whipped out a bottle of Throckmorton Ale.
“Ezra was a creative individual,” Pete said, tapping away on his phone. “And still is, considering he became a barber after Joseph forced him to close the circus.”
John pushed the bottle over to a patron, who grabbed it and paid him.
Pete showed the men around him a photo of a painting on his phone. “He painted this portrait of his grandmother, which I still remember hanging in his office.”
Bruce shuddered as he examined the artwork. “This man creeps me out the more I hear about him.”
“The painting was the most expensive item sold at the auction,” Pete said, pocketing his phone. “The curator of the Opal Gallery bought it, and that’s where it’s currently on display.**”
“I’ll make a note not to go there then,” Bruce said, finishing his Fosters.
“Hopefully, Rachel will be able to solve this mystery soon enough,” Paul said, smiling and nodding his head.
Just then, John’s phone vibrated in his pocket, startling him.
“Is that her?” Bruce said, leaning closer to John.
“No, it’s Adele,” John said, gazing at his phone and answering the call. “I didn’t give her my number.”
John moved away from the bar to talk to his daughter, leaving the barflies to talk amongst themselves.
“This has been quite an exciting trip to our little village for you, hasn’t it, mate?” Bruce said, tapping Pete on the back.
“Yes, I suppose it has,” Pete said, chuckling to himself. “It almost seems like a story that will pass down into legend.”
And with that, the clown finished his pint, paid John what was due, and bid his newfound friends goodbye as he slipped silently out of the pub and back towards the circus he belonged to.
** To find out more about the painting’s illustrious new home, as well as a previous incident of mistaken identity- read: https://thelowerstranglingchronicles.com/2024/05/11/the-forgotten-artist/
The Robinsonverse 