Who Would Do It – Written by Dom Conlon

It began with a mystery and ended with a murder.

The murder, based in Grasmere, took place in a whodunnit whose form was a rather alternative interpretation of the life and times of a William Wordsworth whose promising writing career is cut short by his murder at the hands of a more able, though less appreciated Dorothy who, we are led to believe, fell into a jealous fit after young William ended their incestuous affair in favour of a planned marriage to Annette Vallon (a beautiful but unbelievably innocent foil to the lusty wiles of the poet’s, bisexual, sister). Featuring facts which the author only half-remembered and details he had demonstrably misunderstood concerning the themes of the real world Wordsworth, the novel dragged in, amongst others, an Inspector Shelley whose own literary aspirations prevent him from seeing the truth about the monster Dorothy had become. It was both turgid and flaccid which, whilst certainly a remarkable achievement, was nothing compared to that of the title, “Murder Of The English Language”, which had the critics nodding in agreement.

The mystery, however, had begun years before. He had always wanted to know, long before the world denounced him and despite being encouraged to take extra Gym rather than English, why he wanted to write.

He’d never enjoyed the study of English. Never appreciated, or so he’d been told, the art of the novel or the beauty of a sentence. Yet this man, this man who would be denounced from Amazon to Twitter, continued to want to write.

In sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, sub-plot after motif, the author who would murder Wordsworth would, as he held his children and laughed about his journey into literary history, discover that he couldn’t care less about grammar, or whether his book was read or burnt. The act of writing was enough.

And in finally solving this mystery, the author reached for his notebook and began to give Shakespeare a right good kicking.

Words: 328