Patsy Kelly

            On Sunday morning it was almost 2:00 by the time I got to bed and it took a while to conk out. Needless to say I hadn’t had much sleep when he alarm went off at 5:00. 

            I finished memorizing all fourteen verses of “C’est le Bebop” by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I’ll look for the chords. 

            I also finished memorizing “Dispatch box” by Serge Gainsbourg. I looked for the chords and as usual for his “You’re Under Arrest” album I found a set on Ultimate Guitar and began transcribing them. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the third of four sessions. 

            I weighed 87.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            I re-read another 500 lines of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. A lot of time goes into the description of Gawain’s armour and how it was adorned before venturing out to meet the Green Knight. Given that he was bound by honour to face him without protection it seemed pointless. But I guess as a representative of Arthur’s court he had to present an image when he was out and about. 

            I weighed 88.2 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been at midday in a long time and about three and a half kilos heavier than last year. 

            In the afternoon I headed out to take my bike ride but on my way out of the building I noticed that my front tire was flat. Fortunately Metro Cycle was still open so I took it over there and Mark fixed it right away for $35. It was done fifteen minutes after I left my place and so I still had time to ride downtown and back. 

            When I got home I had a bigger than usual bowel movement and the toilet plugged slightly but wasn’t overflowing. The water went down, bubbled back up a bit and went down and back a few times.

            I weighed 87.2 kilos at 17:45. That’s the most it’s been in the evening in over half a year and about two and a half kilos heavier than last year. 

            I came back to the toilet and saw that it had overflowed and then flushed itself. I used half a roll of paper towels to mop up the water and hopefully it didn’t leak downstairs. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:40. 

            I read another 300 lines of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Gawain has been wandering through the winter cold and on Christmas Eve and prays for a place to perform his traditional rituals of the night before Christmas. Suddenly a great castle comes into view. He approaches and asks for shelter, which he is happily granted. The lord of the castle greets him like a brother and offers him every comfort. Gawain’s fame has preceded him and everyone is ecstatic that he is their guest. The lady of the house is the most beautiful Gawain has ever seen and they become friends immediately. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 1, episode 27 of Burke’s Law. 

            During a regular foxhunt, the host of the event William Henry Otis IV is found murdered in his stable having been bludgeoned with a horseshoe. The suspects are the guests of his weekly hunt. One of the guests is Jennifer Carlisle who is an old girlfriend of Burke who broke his heart when she married St. John Carlisle. Since St. John was not there and has an alibi and no motive, Burke’s detectives say they should rule him out. But perhaps out of jealousy Burke considers St. John his prime suspect. Burke goes to see him and St. John is very arrogant towards him. He tries to attack Burke and gets doubled over with a punch in the gut. Tim and Les go to see Agatha Beauregard and find her fixing her antique car. She didn’t like Otis for many reasons but the main one was he lost a lot of her money in a bad investment. Tim finds that everybody in the hunt group invested money with Otis and it all went down the drain. Carlisle’s secretary calls to make a lunch date with Burke. He thinks it’s with St. John but Jennifer is there. She wants him to back off from her husband. It’s a short meeting. Les uncovers that Otis’s butler Pepperill Twill owns the controlling mortgage on Otis’s entire estate. Twill is a very successful player in the stock market. He tells Burke that Otis did not make the investments for the hunt club’s guests but rather Carlisle and he invested badly. Burke asks his chauffeur Henry if he plays in the market. Henry says he’s a serious shopper. They go to the office of Texas oilman Herman Sitwell where the chairs are all saddles. He says he only lost $300,000 with Otis and there’s plenty more where that came from. He respects Otis for dying with his horse saddled and his boots on. Burke goes to see St. John’s alibi, the beautiful Prudence Wrightly and she flirts with Burke immediately. She confirms that St. John was with her at the time of the murder. Burke has a dream that he is Sherlock Holmes, Les is Watson and Tim is Little Lord Fauntleroy. In the dream they say it was the wrong man and he wakes up realizing it’s true that the murderer killed the wrong man and is going to try again. Burke heads for the hunt and finds Jennifer mounted but yet to join the hunt. St. John is catching up with the hunters. Burke borrows Jennifer’s horse and catches up to St. John. He tells him to give him his hunting hat, coat and horse. He rides towards the hunt and is shot at by Sitwell. Burke says he knows he killed Otis because only the killer would know that Otis died with his horse saddled. They have a long fist fight that Burke wins and Sitwell is arrested for murder. 

            Agatha was played by Patsy Kelly, who was already teaching tap dancing professionally while still in high school. She was performing on vaudeville at the age of twelve. She was discovered by Hal Roach and co-starred with Thelma Todd in a series of comedy shorts. They did thirty five films together, the first being The Grand Dame. Her first feature film was Going Hollywood. She co-starred in Top Flat, Done in Oil, An All American Toothache, Nobody’s Baby, Pick a Star, Thanks a Million, The Gorilla, Merrily We Live, and Harmony Parade. Todd died of carbon monoxide poisoning by accident but Kelly thought her death was suspicious. She starred in Kelly the Second and Danger Women at Work. She was openly lesbian at a time when hardly anyone was out and had a long relationship with Wilma Cox followed by Talulah Bankhead, who she worked for as a secretary. She won a Tony Award for her 1971 performance in No No Nanette and was nominated for another Tony for her role in Irene.