Jill Haworth

            On Wednesday I worked out the chords for most of the second verse of “Amour puissance six” (Love to the Power of Six) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first of four sessions.

            I weighed 85.6 kilos before breakfast.   

            I weighed 85.1 kilos before lunch. I had the rest of the asparagus, a tomato, and two avocadoes with sweet onion dressing and a glass of Clamato juice.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I wore my long underwear for the first time in several days. 

            I weighed 84.5 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:08. 

            I finished transcribing my handwritten notes on the questionable ethics of the heroes in The Hobbit: 

            There is something unethical about the actions of the heroes in The Hobbit. They have a darkness about them that is sugar coated and diminished by making their enemies worse. By rendering the enemies as other species that mean the heroes harm, any transgression against them does not have the same effect as the same actions being committed against a human. The enemy species’ are not as noble and right in the eyes of the heroes as they perceive themselves. The hobbits and their fellow noble species are thinly veiled Englishmen. But from a modern perspective of viewing Medievalist characters created in the 20th Century, the heroes’ actions go against the grain of modern morality. Gandalf marking Bilbo’s door (9) to invite strangers in and then sucking Bilbo into participating in a life threatening endeavour in which he has no stake. Bilbo is conscripted to serve as a burglar on this mission even though he is a middle class marshmallow. He is transformed into a hero through the magic of fantasy. “Burglar” means “house thief” in Old English, which is a criminal activity. Later Bilbo feels compelled because thievery is part of his ancestry to try to pick the pocket of a Troll who is enjoying a meal with his companions by a campfire. These actions glorify criminality by embodying it in the hero of the story. Then we see Bilbo’s questionable behaviour manifest itself when he and Gollum are engaged in a riddle contest. Gollum shows himself to be clever and perhaps more so than Bilbo. During a moment when Bilbo is desperate and stumped to think of a riddle he cheats by changing the rules and rerouting the competition into a guessing game. Meanwhile Gollum, the one who is supposed to be a villain is the one who is playing fair while Bilbo the hero is a cheater. Mark Atherton in “Rhymes and Riddles” claims that Gollum changed the rules by saying, “Ask another question”, but that is like saying that one can change a game from baseball to football by telling your opponent to “shoot the ball” instead of throwing it. Bilbo clearly cheated Gollum. Also Bilbo’s keeping of the ring even after he realizes it belongs to Gollum and that Gollum will probably die without it. For all Bilbo knows he is sentencing Gollum to death by taking the ring. 

            I’ve been waiting for Professor Ballot to provide Andrew and I a link so we can communicate and prepare for our opening dialogue on Friday. 

            I steamed half a crown of broccoli and had it in a salad with the rest of the mushrooms, a scallion, a tomato, three avocadoes, and roasted seaweed with sweet onion dressing while watching the second season finale of Burke’s Law. 

            A greeting card company is having its tenth annual dinner. The entertainment consists of live action portrayals of the top cards of the year on a rotating stage. But when the stage turns to present the master of ceremonies, the president of The House of Cards, Valentine Holiday is nailed to a giant Valentine with an arrow in his chest. 

            Meanwhile Burke is rehearsing for the policeman’s ball and singing “Ma Blushin Rosie” by John Stromberg and Edgar Smith. It was popularized by Al Jolson. 

            The arrow was a fake wrap around arrow. Holiday was poisoned with arsenic. Burke goes to the House of Cards. Hours after Holiday’s death they are already redecorating for Holton Rocket the new president. Supervising the changes is Ambrosia Melon, which Burke finds surprising because she is only 19. She’s the survey expert on greeting cards for the teenage market. She slants policy. She says Holiday lived in his office and if she hadn’t brought him his food he would never have eaten. 

            Burke finds Rocket in his office and grooming himself in the mirror. He seems put off by his vanity. 

            Someone has left a greeting card in Burke’s Rolls that reads, “So you’re going hunting. You’ll look good on my wall”. 

            Holiday hadn’t been feeling well for about four months. The lab report shows that every organ of his body was saturated with arsenic. He had twice the lethal dose and it appeared to have been administered over an extended period of time. Only four people were close to him over a long period: Ambrosia, Rocket, Simeon Quatrain, and the psychologist Heresford Handy. 

            Burke goes to see Handy. He first meets Heresford’s wife Goody who tells him a letter came for him care of their office. It’s another greeting card that reads, “I’m watching you, but you’ll never make the grade”. When Burke questions Heresford, he starts sentences but Goody finishes each one. Heresford was Holiday’s psychological consultant. Goody used to be involved with Holiday. She gives Burke Heresford’s psychological profiles of all of the staff at the company. 

            That night Burke is at home when the doorbell rings. He answers it but only finds another greeting card that reads, “Are you overworked, underpaid, over tired? Take a vacation. You’re fired”.

            Ambrosia invites Burke out for dinner. He goes but reminds her that he is too old for her, but to talk to him when she’s twenty. What difference would one year make? She says Goody was still involved with Holiday when he died. Simeon Quatrain really hated Holiday. Burke finds a greeting card in Ambrosia’s purse addressed to Burke. She says she was going to mail it to him as a joke. It shows a Keystone cop with a pie flying towards his face. The next day Burke learns that Ambrosia’s card and the other cards were all typed with Ambrosia’s typewriter. 

            Tim and Les visit Simeon Quatrain. He was one of Holidays top freelance writers. He paid him $5 a line and picked his brains dry. He hated Holiday’s guts. Now Quatrain has to become a songwriter. He makes up a song about policemen while they are there. 

            Burke has a piece of Holiday’s old green wallpaper and he goes to a decorator’s shop to order it for his home. The decorator says it’s very old so she’ll have to check it. She discovers that it’s called Paris Green and it is no longer available because it is poison. George Seurat’s painting “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” has Paris Green as a pigment. Burke takes the wallpaper sample to George at the lab and he confirms that the wall paper in Holiday’s office was unquestionably the murder weapon. His body absorbed the arsenic over a long period of time. There are no companies left in the US that sell the pigment. They go to see Quatrain because he hung the wallpaper. He didn’t order it and Ambrosia asked him to hang it. Burke, Tim and Les all agree that Ambrosia is the number one suspect. Burke goes to arrest her and finds her at Holiday’s old desk and in his chair. She says Holiday brought the wallpaper back from Europe where he’d been with the Handys. The wallpaper was Goody’s choice. 

            Burke goes to Handy’s office. Heresford sees him through a peep hole and gets a gun ready before receiving him. He admits to killing Holiday to keep him away from Goody. Heresford picked the wallpaper but Holiday didn’t like it and so he got Goody to persuade him. Heresford points the gun at Burke and tells him he can’t have his wife either and he’ll kill him. Suddenly Goody walks in and tells him to put the gun down. He says, “Yes dear” and does so. 

            Burke invites Ambrosia to the police show but tells her Tim is her date. Burke finishes his number.

            Ambrosia was played by Jill Haworth, who trained as a dancer and then attended the Corona Stage School in Britain. She was discovered by Otto Preminger when she was 15 and he cast her as Karen in Exodus. She played supporting roles in two more of his films. He held her contract and wouldn’t let her play the title role in Lolita. From 1966 to 1968 she originated the role of Sally Bowles in Cabaret on Broadway. She co-starred in It, The Haunted House of Horror, Tower of Evil, and Les Mystères de Paris. She was a lover of Sal Mineo and she dated Paul McCartney and Aaron Spelling.